Mastercard and PayPal Introduce AI-Driven Payment Protection for International Trade

Mastercard (NYSE:MA) and

(NASDAQ:PYPL) have revealed a key partnership aimed at advancing secure global agentic commerce, an emerging field where AI-powered agents handle transactions for users. This alliance intends to combine Mastercard’s tokenized payment systems with PayPal’s digital platform to simplify authentication, minimize fraud risk, and improve the efficiency of international payments. The initiative is part of a wider industry movement to adapt to AI-driven commerce, as seen in recent trends surrounding payment security and financial technology infrastructure.

This partnership follows Mastercard’s recent rollout of its Click to Pay feature with Juspay, a payment technology provider, which has allowed merchants in Brazil to implement easy-to-use checkout solutions featuring biometric verification and tokenized payment details, according to a

. In a similar vein, Mastercard’s collaboration with Citi has broadened access to flexible payment choices through Citi Flex Pay, a pay-over-time service now integrated with Mastercard’s Installments Payment Services. This offering, available by the end of the year, lets Citi cardholders break up purchases into set monthly payments without requiring extra credit checks, as detailed in another .

At the same time, confidence among institutional investors in Mastercard’s future has increased, as shown by Railway Pension Investments Ltd’s $137.8 million purchase of 240,000

shares during the third quarter of 2025, according to a . The fund’s total holdings now stand at 329,600 shares, making up 2.54% of its 13F reportable assets. This trend of institutional buying contrasts with a smaller sale by GLOBALT Investments LLC, which sold 682 Mastercard shares in October, as noted in a .

PayPal’s significance in this alliance is highlighted by its upcoming Q3 2025 earnings release, where transaction revenue—which made up 90% of its total revenue in the previous quarter—is projected to grow. Analysts expect Q3 transaction revenue to reach $7.45 billion, fueled by increasing Venmo merchant activity and the expansion of PayPal’s payment network, as described in a

. The company’s emphasis on AI-powered commerce aligns with Cloudflare’s recent work with Visa and Mastercard to secure agentic transactions: Cloudflare’s Web Bot Auth solution, now part of Visa’s Trusted Agent Protocol and Mastercard’s Agent Pay, allows merchants to verify AI agents and distinguish genuine transactions from fraudulent bots, according to a .

The agentic commerce sector is also seeing competition from AI-centric companies like C3.ai, which has established itself as a leader in enterprise agentic AI. Its C3 Agentic AI Platform, adopted by organizations such as the U.S. Army and Nucor Corp., focuses on secure processes to prevent risks like data leaks and AI hallucinations. Competitors including Palantir and BigBear.ai are also making strides in this area, highlighting the growing importance of agentic AI for business automation, as referenced in

.

As Mastercard and PayPal deepen their collaboration, their focus on secure, AI-enabled commerce signals a broader industry transition toward seamless and fraud-resistant payment solutions. With strong institutional support, ongoing technological progress, and regulatory cooperation, the agentic commerce market is set for significant expansion in the near future.