Travelport, Booked AI, Basis Theory and Mastercard, today announced the successful completion of a live end-to-end AI-powered travel booking and payment transaction. Through the collaboration, an AI travel agent searched, booked, paid for and ticketed a live flight without the customer leaving the conversation, and without the agent ever seeing the underlying card number.
As consumers increasingly engage with AI-powered commerce experiences, the collaboration demonstrated a fully integrated and secure travel booking experience in an AI agent environment. It brought together Travelport's travel retailing and connectivity, Mastercard's agentic payment capabilities, Booked AI's conversational travel platform, and Basis Theory’s payment vault to search, book, pay for, and ticket a flight from a major international carrier.
Booked AI's AI travel agent sourced a live New Distribution Capability (NDC) offer from a major airline through Travelport TripServices. Once the customer confirmed the flight and fare details in the conversation platform, Mastercard Agent Pay enabled the agent-initiated payment using a secure tokenized credential, with the underlying card credential held in Basis Theory's PCI-compliant vault. Following payment authorization, the booking was processed and ticketed through Travelport’s and the airline’s own systems, demonstrating how AI-driven travel experiences can be deployed without requiring separate or fragmented booking or payment rails.
Trust and transparency were built in at every step. The customer approved the specific booking and amount before payment, and Mastercard’s Verifiable Intent linked that approval to the transaction so the payment could be checked against the customer’s instructions. Had the transaction details not matched the approved intent and consent, the payment would not have proceeded, and any further purchase would require a new approval from the cardholder.
Importantly, the airline remained the merchant throughout. Processing the payment itself with no intermediary checkout in between, demonstrating that airlines can sell through AI agents while keeping control of how they are paid.
“AI agents will become a major channel for air travel, and airlines shouldn’t have to give up control of the sale or the payment to be part of it,” said Andrew Jordan, Chief Technology Officer at Travelport. “This booking shows they don’t have to: consent is verifiable, the underlying card number never touches the agent, and the airline gets paid on rails it already trusts. That’s what Travelport TripServices is built for – making airline content bookable by whichever agent a traveler chooses. This exercise reflects the work we are doing in the AI space.”
“Mastercard has spent more than a decade helping the travel industry modernize payments, creating a strong foundation for agentic commerce,” said Eimear Creaven, President, Global Partnerships, Mastercard. “By connecting innovative AI experiences with established travel and payments infrastructure, we accelerate adoption while maintaining the security, reliability and control that travelers and travel businesses expect.”
Mennan Yelkenci, Founder & CEO at Booked AI said: “Our commitment is to replicate the human travel agent experience end to end by understanding what a traveler needs and taking care of everything through to ticketing in a trusted environment. This booking is a concrete step towards that. The flow remains agentic throughout: the customer approves once, and that approval is what the payment is checked against.”
James Armstead, CTO at Basis Theory added: “We’re expecting too much from general-purpose agents right now. The experiences that will get people using agents are well-designed paths, like booking travel, that let consumers describe the trip they need and empower the agent to handle the booking, with a secure way to pay on their behalf. That’s why we’re excited to work with Booked AI, Mastercard, and Travelport on this.”
Notes to editors
Booked AI: the AI travel agent that searched, booked and paid on the customer's behalf.
Mastercard: Mastercard Agent Pay enabled a secure, tokenized agent-initiated payment and connected the transaction to the customer's approved intent.
Travelport: Travelport TripServices took a live NDC offer from the airline all the way through to ticketing for an AI agent, passing the payment to the airline to process over existing rails.
Basis Theory: secure PCI vaulting and tokenization enabling Agent Pay.
