Mastercard reported another quarter of strong double-digit revenue growth on July 30, as executives argued that agentic artificial intelligence will strengthen rather than undermine card networks.
For the quarter ending June 30, Mastercard posted net revenue of $9.3 billion, a 12% increase from the prior year, alongside net income of $4.4 billion, up 19%.
CEO Michael Miebach used much of the second-quarter earnings call to lay out why the company believes its infrastructure is well-positioned for an AI-driven commerce environment.
“We expect cards will prevail in an agentic world,” Miebach said, citing Mastercard’s scale, data access, product range, and existing and future risk management capabilities.
Miebach described agentic commerce as “the next evolution in payments,” with the company’s Agent Pay platform designed to extend its network capabilities into AI-assisted shopping.
He acknowledged the competitive dynamics forming around the technology, with large tech companies and banks developing alternatives including pay-by-bank products to capture agentic commerce transactions.
“It’s early days, but engagement across the globe is energizing. The rise of agentic commerce also brings about an entirely new class of payment use cases,” Miebach said during the call.
One key capability Mastercard is developing with Google, called Verifiable Intent, addresses a core consumer concern about AI-initiated purchases going wrong.
“Verifiable intent allows you to basically challenge a transaction and say, ‘I never wanted to buy this,'” Miebach said, adding that existing chargeback processes can then resolve disputes involving AI-assisted purchases.
Miebach argued that consumers’ fundamental expectations around payments have not changed, regardless of the technology executing the transaction.
“We really believe that cards will prevail in that world. The card infrastructure, the card ecosystem, and the Mastercard proposition within that is unique,” Miebach said.
The broader concern among investors is that agentic AI systems, which make purchases autonomously on behalf of users, could steer transactions away from traditional card rails toward cheaper or faster alternatives.
In the most aggressive scenarios, AI systems could route payments through stablecoins or direct settlement rails, potentially eroding the pricing power and transaction volume that card networks depend on.
Industry activity around the space has moved quickly, with Robinhood launching an agentic credit card for Gold Card holders on May 27, 2026, allowing third-party AI agents to make purchases within preset spending limits.
Stripe expanded its Shared Payment Tokens in March, enabling AI agents to initiate transactions using Mastercard and Visa agentic network tokens, while Visa developed its own Trusted Agent Protocol in parallel.
Both major card networks also endorsed Google and Shopify’s Universal Commerce Protocol at its launch, signaling a broad industry effort to establish standards for AI-driven transactions.
Mastercard executives addressed stablecoins directly, saying they remain part of the company’s strategy but complement rather than replace payment networks because they still require interoperability, acceptance, and consumer protections.
