Mastercard has expanded its push into agent-driven commerce with the launch of Agent Pay for Machines, a new service designed for AI agents and software systems that need to make high-frequency, low-value payments automatically. RippleX is among the initial ecosystem participants, bringing the XRP Ledger and Ripple’s RLUSD stablecoin into a broader industry effort to define how machine payments can be credentialed, permissioned and settled across multiple rails.
Mastercard Adds RippleX to AI Agent Payments Push
Mastercard introduced Agent Pay for Machines as an extension of its Agent Pay program, framing the service as infrastructure for a future in which AI agents buy digital services, pay for resources and execute transaction chains on behalf of businesses. The company said the service is designed to support payments that may be worth only fractions of a cent, completed programmatically and securely across its global network. Initial participants and supporters include Adyen, Ant International, BVNK, Checkout.com, Cloudflare, Coinbase, Getnet by Santander, Global Payments, OKX, Polygon, Solana Foundation, Stripe, Tempo and RippleX, among others.
“Agent Pay for Machines will create the conditions for a superbloom of AI business models,” said Jorn Lambert, Mastercard’s chief product officer. “Machine payments can make it possible for services to be bought and sold among agents at fundamentally different scales than payments today — very high volumes, very small values, very fast and at extremely low latency.” Mastercard’s framing is that machine-to-machine commerce is not simply a faster version of card checkout, but a different payment pattern: continuous, embedded, permissioned and often invisible to the end user.
The service is built around credentialing, permissioning, transacting and settlement. Mastercard said agents can be credentialed and recognized through Verifiable Intent, while organizations can set authorization rules and spending limits that are enforced programmatically. Settlement is designed to work across cards, accounts and stablecoins, a point that gives the initiative direct relevance for crypto payment firms and blockchain infrastructure providers seeking enterprise use cases beyond consumer transfers and trading.
RippleX Brings XRPL and RLUSD to Machine Payments
Ripple positioned its participation around the need for trust and controls as AI agents begin transacting for businesses. “As AI agents begin transacting on behalf of businesses, payments need more than speed. They need trust, controls, and clear rules for how value moves. We’re helping build the infrastructure for trusted agent-driven payments, with the XRP Ledger and $RLUSD helping lay the foundation for the future of commerce,” Ripple wrote on X. The company added that it is part of the ecosystem supporting Mastercard’s Agent Pay for Machines initiative to help validate use cases, establish common rules and accelerate adoption.
As AI agents begin transacting on behalf of businesses, payments need more than speed. They need trust, controls, and clear rules for how value moves.
We’re helping build the infrastructure for trusted agent-driven payments, with the XRP Ledger and $RLUSD helping lay the… https://t.co/VyrC5a8e2e pic.twitter.com/OyF5vQIDYZ
— Ripple (@Ripple) June 10, 2026
Markus Infanger, senior vice president of RippleX, said the XRP Ledger and RLUSD are intended to support enterprise-grade machine payments with embedded controls. “Autonomous agents are already settling invoices and paying for compute on their own, but institutions can only move at that speed if the controls move with them,” Infanger said. “XRPL and RLUSD are built so enterprises can let agents transact at machine speed within rules the chain itself enforces, with settlement in seconds, predictable costs, programmable compliance, and a full audit trail, so agents can only ever do what they are authorized to do. Mastercard’s move toward regulated stablecoin settlement on-chain is an important signal that this is evolving from an emerging capability into an enterprise standard.”
The broader partner list shows Mastercard is not treating stablecoins as a standalone crypto feature, but as one of several settlement options for agentic commerce. Chris Harmse, co-founder and chief business officer at BVNK, said stablecoins can bring “greater speed, programmability and efficiency to how value moves,” while Nina Coughlin, head of Stablecoin Business Development at Coinbase, said the effort combines trusted payment networks with programmable digital dollars and open standards such as x402. For RippleX, the key strategic role is placing XRPL and RLUSD inside a multi-rail framework where machine payments require not only fast settlement, but identity, policy enforcement, auditability and interoperability with existing payment infrastructure.
AI Transparency Note: This article was prepared with the assistance of an AI system based on the sources listed and was reviewed, edited, and approved by a human editor before publication. All quotes, data points, and factual claims are intended to be grounded in the cited source material; however, errors cannot be ruled out entirely.
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