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Rain, Visa, Mastercard form agentic AI standards group

Visa and Mastercard are creating the rules for a future where AI bots, not humans, handle the checkout process.

Curated by Financing Your Way from original reporting by American Banker — Top News. Summary is AI-assisted and editorially reviewed — see our editorial standards.

FYWBy Financing Your Way EditorialAugust 18, 2026

Visa and Mastercard are joining forces with stablecoin firm Rain to build standards for 'agentic commerce.' This is a new way of shopping where AI agents—not humans—handle the actual payment process. For a retailer, this means your future customers might be autonomous bots programmed to find and buy products on behalf of a person. The new alliance aims to solve the massive security risks this creates. If an AI makes a purchase, how do you verify it was authorized? How do you handle a dispute if a bot buys the wrong item? This group is working on the infrastructure to make these transactions safe and standardized. They are focusing on how AI agents can be authenticated using digital credentials instead of traditional credit card numbers. For merchants, this could eventually mean a shift in how you design your checkout flows. You won't just be optimizing for human clicks; you'll be optimizing for 'machine-readable' payments. While this is in the early stages, it signals that the biggest players in finance expect AI-driven spending to become a major revenue stream. The goal is to ensure these automated transactions are as reliable and reversible as a standard swipe or tap.

Source: American Banker — Top News

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