Visa and Mastercard's Battle for Agentic Commerce Standards Heats Up

Visa, Mastercard, and Stripe Release Competing Standards in the Same Week

Visa, Mastercard jockey to set agentic standards | Payments Dive

The card networks are locking arms with big tech players and digital payments to shape the evolving agentic commerce ecosystem.

Between March 3 and 5, 2026, the race to standardize agentic commerce accelerated dramatically. According to Payments Dive, Visa, Mastercard, and Stripe each announced competing standards and technologies within just a few days of each other.

On March 3, Stripe announced the expansion of its "Shared Payment Token (SPT)" technology and began deploying an agentic payment infrastructure compatible with both Mastercard Agent Pay and Visa Intelligent Commerce. On the same day, Visa's Jack Forestell (Chief Product and Strategy Officer) stated at a Morgan Stanley-hosted conference that the company is focused on developing payment standards. Then on March 5, Mastercard announced the open-source release of "Verifiable Intent," co-developed with Google.

Industry Context

The agentic commerce market is expanding rapidly. According to a McKinsey research report, consumer transactions mediated by AI agents are projected to reach $3 to $5 trillion globally by 2030.

Facing this massive market opportunity, payment networks have been intensifying standardization efforts since late 2024. In September 2024, Google announced the "Agent Payments Protocol (AP2)" and Mastercard began collaborating through its "Agent Pay" program. In October of the same year, Visa announced the "Trusted Agent Protocol". In January 2025, Google released the merchant-facing "Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP)," with both Visa and Mastercard participating.

In other words, a "coopetition" dynamic where companies simultaneously cooperate and compete has become clear. FreedomPay President Christopher Kronenthal has pointed to the lesson from past digital wallet standardization delays that slowed adoption, emphasizing that early standards unification is essential.

What Is Mastercard's "Verifiable Intent"?

The most notable development is Mastercard's announcement of "Verifiable Intent", an open standard designed as a "trust proof layer" for when AI agents make purchases on behalf of consumers.

At the core of Verifiable Intent is the ability to combine three elements into a single tamper-proof record using cryptographic technology: cardholder identity verification, the specific instructions given by the consumer, and the results of interactions between the agent and merchant. When disputes arise, all parties can reference this record for fact-based resolution.

Privacy protection mechanisms are also built in. A technology called "Selective Disclosure" ensures that only the minimum information necessary for transaction verification and dispute resolution is shared with each party. The technical foundation leverages standards from FIDO Alliance, EMVCo, IETF, and W3C.

Mastercard's Chief Digital Officer Pablo Fourez has articulated the significance of this initiative succinctly: as agent autonomy increases, trust must not be implicit but provable.

The simultaneous release of specifications on GitHub and the launch of a developer site were accompanied by partner participation from Google, Fiserv, IBM, Checkout.com, Basis Theory, Adyen, and Getnet. Google's Stavan Parikh (VP and GM of Payments) has described Verifiable Intent as interoperable trust infrastructure compatible with the Agent Payments Protocol.

Visa's Counter-Strategy

Visa is responding with a comprehensive framework called "Visa Intelligent Commerce." Over 100 partners are participating globally, with more than 30 building tools in sandbox environments. Over 20 AI agents and platforms are directly integrating with Visa Intelligent Commerce.

According to Stripe's blog, Stripe's SPT technology supports both Visa and Mastercard agentic network tokens, as well as BNPL (buy now, pay later) tokens from Affirm and Klarna. It is particularly noteworthy that Stripe is already deploying SPT with major merchants including Etsy and URBN Group (Anthropologie, Free People, Urban Outfitters), functioning as a "middle layer" bridging both camps.

While Visa's strategy emphasizes ecosystem expansion and partner volume, Mastercard is differentiating through open-source release and cryptographic proof technology.

Impact and Action Items for E-commerce Businesses

Here are the actions e-commerce businesses should take at this stage:

Short-term (H1 2026): Businesses using Stripe can automatically support both Visa and Mastercard agentic payments through SPT compatibility. Since additional implementation work is minimal, starting with Stripe-based support is the most practical option.

Medium-term (H2 2026 onward): Mastercard's Verifiable Intent API is scheduled to be integrated into Agent Pay. As this technology directly contributes to more efficient dispute processing and chargeback reduction, it is important to monitor your payment provider's support status. Fiserv's Sanjay Saraf has stated that this mechanism directly strengthens merchant fraud prevention and dispute response capabilities.

Key considerations: Standards fragmentation is a challenge previously seen during the digital wallet adoption era. Rather than over-relying on any single standard, building an architecture that can flexibly support multiple protocols is recommended. Google UCP, Visa Trusted Agent Protocol, and Mastercard Verifiable Intent are in many ways complementary rather than competing, making indirect support through payment provider compatibility the most efficient approach.

Summary

Agentic commerce standardization is not merely a technical specification battle but a fundamental question about how to build the "trust infrastructure" for an era when AI autonomously conducts payments. A clear picture is emerging: Mastercard presents open-source "provable intent" mechanisms, Visa counters with ecosystem scale, and Stripe serves as the bridge integrating both.

Key areas to watch going forward are how much community support the Verifiable Intent specification gains on GitHub, and whether the Visa camp will build its own equivalent cryptographic proof layer or converge on Mastercard's specification. With Visa Intelligent Commerce's full-scale deployment and Mastercard Agent Pay integration both planned for the second half of 2026, agentic payments are entering the practical stage. For e-commerce businesses, the time has come to begin preparing for AI agent support while closely monitoring payment provider developments.