At Cloudflare Connect, Mastercard launched Agent Pay for Machines in developer early access. In a nutshell: the boss sets the task and budget first, then AI buys services—not just handing a card to a bot.

In the demo, marketing agency Hype gives an agent a budget to plan a protein bar campaign. The agent buys social media research from AIsa and uses Cloudflare AI Gateway to create eight images: nine payments, two merchants, all within one approved budget. Under the hood: x402 (HTTP 402 Payment Required), incubated by Coinbase; wallet infrastructure from Coinbase Developer Platform; and Base for on-chain settlement. BVNK acts as the agent's wallet and uses Mastercard Global Money Platform. Payments can be made in fiat or stablecoins, including $USDC.

Pilot partners: Cloudflare, Ant International, AIsa, Base, BVNK, Coinbase, and Hype. Supports cards, bank accounts, and stablecoins, with spending controls built in. The Block notes that it is still in pilot and has not officially launched commercially; developers can try the buyer/seller APIs, sandbox, and documentation.

This is different from the “stablecoins going through security screening” story from a couple of days ago—this time, it’s about how agents pay. The official website puts it plainly: the hard part isn’t payment, it’s permissions.

This is not investment advice.

#Mastercard #x402 #Base #稳定币 #AIPayments