Agentic Commerce and the ‘Legacy’ Payments Providers - the CEOs of Visa, Mastercard and AmEx on Why There’s Life in the Old Dogs Yet

Why It Matters

Legacy payment giants can leverage their trust infrastructure to become the default layer for AI‑driven purchasing, shaping the future of both consumer and B2B commerce.

Key Takeaways

• Visa cites 5 billion digital credentials and 200 million merchants as agentic foundation
• Mastercard’s Agent Pay adds a trust layer for agent‑assisted transactions
• AmEx leverages decades of fraud data to protect AI‑driven purchases
• All three see tokenization as essential; half of online payments already tokenized
• Developer tools could turn CLIs into new point‑of‑sale platforms

Pulse Analysis

Agentic commerce—where AI agents act on behalf of shoppers and procurement teams—represents a seismic shift in how value is exchanged online. Legacy networks such as Visa, Mastercard and American Express are positioning themselves as the trusted backbone of this ecosystem. Their arguments hinge on scale: Visa’s five billion digital tokens, Mastercard’s global Agent Pay framework, and AmEx’s proprietary fraud‑decisioning models built on decades of data. By embedding trust, liability protection and dispute mechanisms into the agent layer, these firms aim to make their cards the default credential for autonomous purchases, whether for a family dinner or a corporate software license.

The B2B segment offers the most immediate growth runway. Executives highlighted that agents could automate procurement workflows, from ordering cloud compute to buying advertising inventory, turning every API into a point‑of‑sale. Tokenization—already covering roughly 50% of online transactions—will become mandatory to securely transmit instructions between agents, merchants and banks. This not only reduces fraud risk but also creates a seamless data trail that fuels AI‑driven risk models, reinforcing the incumbents’ advantage over newer fintech entrants.

However, the rise of low‑code developer tools like Claude Code introduces a disruptive counterforce. As more users become capable of building applications, the command‑line interface may evolve into a universal commerce gateway, bypassing traditional checkout flows. Legacy providers must therefore integrate with these developer ecosystems, offering APIs that embed their tokenized credentials and trust layers directly into the code. Those that succeed will lock in future transaction volume, while those that lag risk ceding market share to agile, API‑first challengers.