Visa TAP vs Mastercard Agent Pay

Last verified 2026-06-18

Short answer: TAP and Agent Pay are how the two largest card networks approach agentic commerce, and they emphasize different things. Visa’s Trusted Agent Protocol (14 October 2025, with Cloudflare) is primarily a trust and identity layer: it lets a merchant cryptographically verify that an incoming AI agent is a sanctioned shopping agent, using HTTP Message Signatures (RFC 9421). Mastercard’s Agent Pay (29 April 2025) is a payments program: it lets registered, verified agents pay on a consumer’s behalf using Mastercard Agentic Tokens. In June 2026 both expanded on the same day: Visa widened Intelligent Commerce with Agent Score and an Agentic Directory and partnered with OpenAI, while Mastercard launched Agent Pay for Machines for machine-speed payments with 30+ partners. A merchant typically meets both through a processor rather than choosing one.

Filter standards:

Criterion	TAP	Agent Pay
Network	Visa	Mastercard
Announced	14 Oct 2025 (with Cloudflare)	29 Apr 2025
What it is	Agent identity and verification framework	Agentic payments program
Layer	Trust: verify a trusted agent at checkout	Payment: a verified agent pays on a user's behalf
Mechanism	HTTP Message Signatures (RFC 9421)	Mastercard Agentic Tokens (tokenization)
Open or proprietary	Public GitHub spec (custom license)	Proprietary network program
Carries payment	Optional payment info; payment runs on Visa	Yes, card payments via Agentic Tokens
June 2026 expansion	Visa Intelligent Commerce: Agent Score, Agentic Directory, OpenAI partnership	Agent Pay for Machines (AP4M), 30+ partners
Notable partners	Cloudflare, Adyen, Stripe, Shopify, Coinbase, OpenAI	Microsoft, Adyen, Coinbase, Stripe, Cloudflare, Nordea, Getnet

Table last verified 2026-06-18.

Frequently asked questions

Are TAP and Agent Pay the same thing?

No. Visa TAP focuses on verifying agent identity at checkout, Mastercard Agent Pay focuses on letting a verified agent pay. They sit at different layers of the same flow.

Do I have to pick Visa or Mastercard for agents?

No. Both run on existing card rails and are typically reached through a payment processor, so a merchant can accept agent-initiated payments on both networks.

What changed in June 2026?

On 10 June 2026 Visa expanded Intelligent Commerce (Agent Score, Agentic Directory, Large Transaction Model) and partnered with OpenAI, and Mastercard launched Agent Pay for Machines with more than 30 partners.