Mastercard expands startup outreach to agentic AI firms

• Key insights: Mastercard is expanding its Start Path startup outreach to include agentic AI firms. 
• What's at stake: Visa and fintechs are rivals in the race to capture merchants eager to adopt agentic AI. 
• Forward look: Banks, fintechs and merchants are forming strategies for the emerging form of AI, which requires little or no human supervision to complete tasks.

Mastercard's pursuit of agentic commerce is extending beyond large technology companies as it attempts to spot sources of innovation for the emerging technology.

The card brand has added agentic and other emerging forms of artificial intelligence to Start Path, a Mastercard outreach program for startups. The move comes as Mastercard enters a series of partnerships with companies such as Google, and would enable Mastercard to spot potential partners among small up and coming firms.

Mastercard is looking to boost its exposure to agentic commerce. The technology uses little or no human interaction to execute payments or other transactions. Banks and payment companies are investing in agentic AI while merchants look for use cases for the technology. 

 "The agentic ecosystem will take many more participants, so we have Google and OpenAI but also smaller players," Pablo Fourez, chief digital officer at Mastercard, told American Banker. "It takes a village." 

Search for tech

Founded in 2014, Mastercard Start Path is an accelerator that provides access to experts at Mastercard and its partners for consulting and other support. The program also acts as a matchmaker between entrepreneurs and venture capitalists, working with more than 500 startups in the past 11 years with more than $25 billion raised in connection to the program. Startups apply to the program, and the card network regularly selects "classes" of startups.

Mastercard has used the program as a way to search for developers active in emerging technology. For example, in 2024 it used Start Path to recruit companies active in technology that enables data sharing, or open banking, as a way for consumers to use their primary bank accounts to access services from third parties. Mastercard's Start Path, and a similar program from Visa called Fintech Fast Track, are also part of an effort to boost financial inclusion by reaching developers from underserved markets. 

 "We're looking for startups and fintechs that are spread across the world," Sabrina Tharani, senior vice president of global fintech programs at Mastercard, told American Banker. "We hope that will distribute growth for the technology rather than using a hub to do so."

In addition to Google, Mastercard has also collaborated with PayPal's Braintree, IBM and more recently FIS, which is using Mastercard and Visa to build scale for agentic AI commerce. These partnerships build on Mastercard Agent Pay, an agentic payments program that uses existing Mastercard security protocols to support agent payments for mobile payments, card-on-file and programmable transactions such as recurring expenses and subscriptions. 

Mastercard Agent Pay generates personalized payment experiences to consumers, merchants and issuers. It expands Mastercard's existing generative AI technology, which enhances customer service, security and onboarding, generating automated responses to customers."There's not going to be one single company that shapes the agentic economy," Tharani said. 

Lots of options

Mastercard faces plenty of competition. Visa, which did not provide comment for this article, recently introduced a framework that recognizes AI agents and guides communication between companies that use agentic AI. Visa's partners include Adyen, Ant, Checkout.com, Coinbase, Elavon, Cybersource, Fiserv, Microsoft, Nevei, Shopify, Stripe and Worldpay. Visa's strategy is to use "no-code" or technology that's designed to make it easier for merchants to adopt AI agents.

PayPal, one of Mastercard and Visa's biggest rivals, last week agreed to acquire Cymbio, a technology company that sells e-commerce and artificial intelligence tools to merchants. PayPal is an existing investor in Cymbio and has partnered with the firm to augment PayPal's agentic AI development. PayPal is expanding use of agentic commerce, including a recent partnership to support Microsoft's Copilot Checkout, which shoppers use to choose payments and make payments. 

While Visa and Mastercard are partnering with technology firms, including PayPal, to build a market for agentic commerce, the card networks are also expanding their services strategies, searching for more ways to use their substantial scale to earn revenue from fees beyond payments. 

"This is another example of existing networks doing everything they can to maintain their primary status," Tony DeSanctis, senior director at Cornerstone Advisors, told American Banker. As new payment channels emerge, including agentic commerce and Google's new UPC solution, Mastercard and Visa will work hard to maintain their position as the default payment type within those new ecosystems, according to DeSantis. 

"Companies like Stripe are also trying to create solutions to possibly disrupt or compliment the Mastercard and Visa networks. Everyone is trying to skate where the puck is going," DeSantis said.