For decades, fintech innovation has focused on one thing: making it easier for humans to pay. We’ve gone from swiping cards to tapping phones and one-click checkouts. But at the India AI Impact Summit 2026, Mastercard demonstrated a future where the human disappears from the transaction entirely.
They call it Agentic Commerce, a system where AI software agents, not people, find products, negotiate details, and execute payments autonomously.
The demo was a glimpse into a world where your digital assistant doesn’t just suggest a gift for your spouse; it finds the best price, verifies the merchant’s security, and uses your stored credentials to buy it while you’re asleep.
How it works:
- Identity Verification: A secure framework that verifies both the owner and the AI’s authority to spend.
- Tokenization: Using encrypted digital tokens instead of raw card numbers to keep machine-led spending secure.
- Permission Rules: Users set spending caps and merchant restrictions, turning shopping into a background workflow.
This shift creates a massive ripple effect for businesses:
- For Merchants: If an AI is browsing your site, it doesn’t care about your flashy web design. It needs structured APIs and transparent data. If your fees are hidden, the AI will filter you out before a human ever sees your brand.
- For Finance Teams: Procurement rules must evolve. How do you audit a machine’s decision? Who is liable if an AI agent overspends or makes a mistake?
- For Security: Fraud detection models that look for unusual human behavior are becoming obsolete. We now need models that can distinguish between a legitimate AI purchase and a malicious bot.
