Europe Leads the Charge in Agentic Commerce

Jan de Vries · 2026-07-07

By Brice van de Walle, Executive Vice President, Core Payments Europe, Mastercard Agentic commerce isn't some far-off idea anymore. Across Europe, it's happening right now. AI is already changing how we shop—it understands what we're looking for, gives us tailored suggestions, and even hunts down the best prices for our budgets. But until recently, that smooth experience hit a wall at the payment stage. ### The Gap Is Closing Industry leaders across Europe have been working hard to fix that. AI is moving beyond just giving advice and starting to take part in the transaction itself. What used to be just theories about AI-initiated purchases are now being tested in real-world pilots, with banks and payment companies working together. In controlled, consent-based scenarios, consumers can already authorize an AI agent to buy something for them using credentials they already trust. Think of it like letting a trusted assistant handle the checkout—but this assistant is an AI. ### Europe's Pioneering Role Europe is at the forefront here. Banks across the continent have completed live agentic transactions using passkeys for authentication. When the right infrastructure is in place—things like tokenization, authentication, and strong consumer consent—trusted AI payments become a real possibility. Just this month, Mastercard teamed up with Worldline and ING to pull off a live end-to-end agentic transaction, with everything happening in Europe. That's a huge milestone. It's moving agentic commerce from pilots to actual merchant capability, ensuring AI-initiated payments can be processed transparently and at scale. ### What Makes This Work For agentic commerce to really take off, a few key pieces need to fit together: - **Consumer consent**: Every AI-driven transaction must be explicitly authorized by the user. - **Strong authentication**: Passkeys and other secure methods ensure only the right person can approve purchases. - **Transparency**: Measures like Verifiable Intent let banks and consumers trace every transaction back to its source. - **Collaboration**: Issuers, acquirers, and payment service providers need to work together to create repeatable models. ### Trust Is Everything Trust is the big differentiator here. Without it, no one will feel comfortable letting AI handle their payments. That's why Mastercard is working with partners like the FIDO Alliance and Google to build common frameworks for trusted, user-consented AI interactions. They've also enabled issuers in Europe at a network level for Agent Pay and launched the Lisbon Centre of Excellence for Innovation. This center will speed up the development of next-generation, agent-driven payment experiences. ### The Big Picture Europe is turning agentic commerce from a promise into a practice. By focusing on AI-driven commerce that balances accountability and discipline with innovation, the continent is setting the stage for a wave of AI-powered shopping that's simple and convenient—without sacrificing safety or control. Consumers get the best of both worlds: the ease of automated shopping and the peace of mind that comes with strong protections. That's a future worth getting excited about.