Mastercard AI agent pays two merchants nine times inside one approved budget

At Cloudflare’s Connect conference, Mastercard used an AI agent to pay two sellers nine times from one approved budget. The demonstration, led by Mastercard’s Jorn Lambert, used Agent Pay for Machines, which Mastercard made available in early access; the agent bought social media research from AIsa and eight images from Cloudflare’s AI Gateway for a Hype protein-bar campaign. Payments relied on the x402 protocol incubated by Coinbase, with the agent signing a digital voucher capped at the user-approved limit. Coinbase’s wallet funded the agent, Base settled on-chain, and BVNK processed fiat or stablecoin payments through Mastercard’s Global Money Platform. Mastercard said the project remains in pilot and is not commercially available.