Mastercard gives merchants in EEMEA a simpler way to build, connect and scale AI-powered shopping experiences

Dubai, United Arab Emirates – 21 September 2026: New Mastercard Agent Connect solution and expanded Agent Suite for Merchants capabilities will help businesses in EEMEA create agent-powered shopping experiences, make products discoverable across AI ecosystems and support trusted agentic transactions while maintaining control.

Imagine you’re a business selling home fitness equipment. As shopping shifts from websites and apps to AI-powered agents, new questions emerge:
•    How do you create an agent-powered experience on your own channels?
•    How do consumers discover your products?
•    How do you decide which platforms and agents can access your products?
•    How do you maintain control over your brand, customer relationships and business rules?
•    And how do you support a trusted path to purchase?

Mastercard will help businesses of all sizes answer these questions through an expansion of Mastercard Agent Suite for Merchants, which allows businesses to bring agent-powered shopping experiences, including product discovery, research and consumer-authorized purchases, directly into their existing e-commerce environments.

Mastercard is also introducing Mastercard Agent Connect, a new solution that will help merchants, AI agents, digital platforms and payment providers easily connect and transact through a single integration. Together, these capabilities will help merchants participate wherever AI-powered commerce is taking shape, maintain control over how their products and services are represented, and support trusted, user-authorized transactions.
Turn AI-powered shopping experiences into reality

Introduced in January, Mastercard Agent Suite helps businesses prepare for agentic commerce through access to services such as Mastercard’s AI consulting. With new shopping agent capabilities and access to Agent Connect, Agent Suite for Merchants will help merchants put agentic commerce into practice, prepare product information for AI discovery and connect with participating third-party agents. Mastercard can also help merchants prepare to support secure agentic transactions with Mastercard Agent Pay.

Agent Suite for Merchants will build on collaborations with AI platforms such as Anthropic to make it easier for businesses to create, deploy and scale AI-powered shopping experiences. For example, Mastercard will make Anthropic's commerce agent blueprint available to merchants through Agent Suite for Merchants so they can more easily build shopping agents with Claude models that integrate Mastercard's commerce intelligence, controls, personalization and payments capabilities and create differentiated shopping experiences on their own websites or apps.
 
Make products discoverable across AI experiences

Consumers are increasingly relying on AI-powered assistants to discover products, compare options and decide what to buy. To participate, merchants need product information that AI agents can find, understand and act on. Agent Suite for Merchants lets businesses make merchant-defined information –  including product details, pricing, availability and fulfillment options – accessible across models, platforms and agent experiences while maintaining control over how that information is used, represented and acted upon.
Leading businesses, technology providers and commerce platforms, including Castlery, Fabrick, Fiserv, FreedomPay, Getnet, Global Payments, Moneris, Nexi, Network International, Trip.com and Worldline plan to use Agent Suite for Merchants to help shape the future of agentic commerce.
 
Connect to external AI agents while staying in control
As agentic commerce expands across platforms and providers, businesses face a growing web of integrations. Mastercard Agent Connect simplifies connectivity through a single integration point – helping agents reach participating merchants, commerce services and payment providers, while helping merchants make their products and services available across participating AI-powered experiences.

Merchants can decide where and how they participate. They can choose which AI experiences to connect with while maintaining control over pricing, fulfillment, customer relationships, brand experiences and business rules, supported by Mastercard’s enterprise-grade governance, monitoring and controls.
 
Enable trusted agentic transactions
Discovery is only part of the journey. Agents must also be able to confirm the details of a purchase and complete it securely with the consumer’s authorization. Through Agent Connect, participating agents can move across three stages of the shopping journey:
•    Discover merchant-provided product catalog information such as product details and availability.
•    Recommend products for a shopper’s cart and confirm final pricing, taxes, shipping costs and fulfillment details.
•    Complete transactions using secure payment credentials from any network.

Mastercard transactions can further be secured through Mastercard Agent Pay, which uses Verifiable Intent to help ensure purchases are completed securely with the consumer’s authorization. In the future, agents may further benefit from network agnostic tokenization functionality as made available by Mastercard.

Beginning in the United States, a growing network of technology companies and platforms exploring new commerce experiences expect to leverage Mastercard Agent Connect, including Bemobi, Getnet, Glance, Global Payments, Majid Al Futtaim, Planet, Network International, Nexi, Samsung, Trip.com, Vodafone Egypt, Wizard and Wompi. Mastercard is working with firmly to help businesses using Agent Connect extend their product catalogs and shopping experiences.

Mastercard Agent Connect is expected to evolve over time with additional capabilities, subject to market needs and product availability.
 
Helping merchants prepare for what comes next

“The internet connected people to businesses. Mobile put those businesses in everyone's pocket. AI agents will change the buying interface again, shifting commerce from search and discovery to checkout and disputes,” said Jorn Lambert, chief product officer at Mastercard. “We’re helping businesses prepare for that future while keeping them in control of their destiny through the same principles that have always made commerce work at scale: trust, interoperability, security and reach.”

As the space evolves, Mastercard will continue to work with Anthropic, OpenAI and other leading AI labs to explore how trusted, merchant-authorized commerce experiences can take shape wherever consumers engage with agentic commerce.
 
Quote sheet from merchants in EEMEA:

"AI is changing travel from a search experience into a much more intelligent and personalized journey. This is why we’re working with Mastercard to define the next generation of AI-powered commerce through Agent Suite for Merchants, exploring how AI agents can securely and, with the traveler’s authorization, help complete travel-related transactions,” said Siddharth Sudhakar, general manager, MENA at Trip.com. “Ultimately, our role is not just to help travelers find the right trip, but to make their entire journey, from discovery and planning through to booking and payment, much simpler, faster and more connected,”

“Mastercard's Agent Suite for Merchants gives FreedomPay a powerful way to help our customers participate in agentic commerce confidently,” said Chris Kronenthal, president of FreedomPay. “By joining forces to leverage trusted infrastructure and simplify adoption, we will accelerate AI driven innovation across the merchant ecosystem."

"As the largest acquirer in the Middle East and Africa, Network International processes billions of transactions. While commerce is shifting to AI-led experiences, the trust infrastructure behind that shift matters as much as the interface,” said Murat Cagri Suzer, group chief executive officer at Network International. “As a Mastercard partner, Network International provides the trusted, ready-to-deploy agentic commerce infrastructure across the Middle East and Africa, as well as the data to build the intelligence platforms. We will continue to connect our partner merchants to this new era of commerce with ease and confidence."

“Egypt’s digital economy is rapidly evolving, with e-commerce expected to see significant growth as more customers embrace digital channels to conveniently access the products and services they need. With more than 55 million customers across the country and Egypt’s largest mobile wallet, Vodafone Cash, Vodafone Egypt is at the heart of this digital transformation. We believe that as commerce becomes increasingly AI-driven, putting the customer experience at the center will be more important than ever,” said Mohamed Moaz, financial services director at Vodafone Egypt. “Our collaboration with Mastercard enables us to explore how agentic commerce can make digital experiences more seamless, personalized and trusted, while keeping pace with the evolving needs and expectations of our customers and supporting the next wave of growth in Egypt’s digital economy.”