Mastercard Completes New Zealand’s First Authenticated Agentic Transactions With Westpac, Bringing Trust, Transparency and Security to AI-Powered Commerce

WHY THIS MATTERS: This collaboration signals a critical standardization milestone for Agentic Commerce across the Asia Pacific region. As AI-powered agents transition from passive assistants to autonomous purchasers, the core industry challenge becomes establishing a verifiable framework of trust and liability. Mastercard’s Agent Pay solution tackles this by establishing AI agents as “visible, governed participants” in the payment flow, effectively solving the issue of financial transparency for transactions initiated by Large Language Models (LLMs). This is value-first because it immediately addresses the high consumer appetite for autonomous AI—shown by 75% of New Zealanders wanting this capability—while institutionalizing essential digital governance. For financial institutions, this framework allows for immediate fraud detection, streamlined dispute resolution, and necessary regulatory oversight to be built into the fabric of the AI transaction layer, accelerating confident mass adoption across the merchant ecosystem.

Agentic commerce sees AI-powered agents search for, discover, and in some instances even make purchases on behalf of consumers. It’s an exciting opportunity for New Zealanders, with research showing 69% of consumers are convinced agentic AI will make their lives easier[1]. Specifically, AI that can interpret intent, make decisions and take autonomous action appeals to 75% [1] of consumers.

Mastercard is accelerating this future by completing New Zealand’s first fully authenticated agentic transactions on its network, as it continues to scale its Agent Pay solution across the region.

By enabling fully recognized and authenticated agentic transactions, Mastercard’s trusted agentic framework process brings AI agents into the payment flow as visible, governed participants – ensuring that every transaction is secure, transparent, and trusted.

Unlocking agentic commerce: Interoperability and standards for consumers and businesses

Mastercard’s Agent Pay framework enables seamless interoperability between issuers, acquirers and merchants. By adhering to industry standards, consumers and businesses benefit from trusted and consistent agent-powered experiences – regardless of which partners or platforms are involved.

New Zealand’s first Agent Pay transaction saw Mastercard use a Westpac-issued debit card to purchase cinema tickets from Event Cinemas. The transaction was fully authorized with cardholder consent, and every participant in the payment flow – issuer, acquirer and merchant – could see and recognize that an agent conducted the transaction.

Building on this, a separate transaction booked accommodation with QT Hotels & Resorts in Queenstown, demonstrating how agentic payments could support travel bookings. Both transactions were processed through IPSI and completed using Maincode’s large language model, Matilda, reinforcing the flexibility and scalability of agentic commerce across different payment environments.

“New Zealand has the potential to be leaders in digital payments again, and this milestone is testament to that,” said Megan Simons, Country Manager for New Zealand and the Pacific Islands. “Our role is to ensure this future is built on trust, security and transparency, the same standards New Zealanders expect from everyday card payments. We’re proud to partner with Westpac on this initiative, demonstrating what’s possible when technology is matched with strong governance.”

Westpac NZ Managing Director of Product, Sustainability and Marketing, Sarah Hearn, says the bank is looking forward to rolling out this cutting-edge technology: “We’re investing heavily in innovative technology and processes to make banking faster, safer and easier for New Zealanders.  Agentic AI has huge potential to improve payment experiences, and we’re pleased to be working with Mastercard to bring the technology to our customers in the future”.

Accelerating agentic commerce across Australasia and beyond

Mastercard is focused on advancing agentic commerce across Australasia and Asia Pacific with additional efforts:

• Establishing a regional AI Centre of Excellence to accelerate innovation and governance for agentic commerce
• Building deep partnerships with leading LLM providers across Asia Pacific
• Deploying dedicated agentic commerce teams across the region to support financial institutions and merchants as they transition to agent-led experiences – including a dedicated team based at Mastercard’s Sydney Tech Hub

In New Zealand, there is already a growing desire to use AI assistants for shopping, with entertainment (36%), clothing (34%), and health and beauty (32%) popular categories[1]. Among the shoppers already using AI assistants, 83% report positive experiences[1].

Delivering transparency and trust in every agentic transaction

Transparency in agentic commerce is vital for building trust, enhancing security, and protecting all parties involved in a transaction. When AI-powered agents lead purchases, ensuring visibility throughout the payment flow allows issuers, acquirers and merchants to apply robust controls, resolve disputes efficiently and detect fraud patterns more effectively. Mastercard Agent Pay recognizes and authenticates agents, paving the way for transparent, governed agentic commerce experiences and setting a new standard for security and reliability.

This latest milestone in New Zealand follows successful Agent Pay launches in the U.S., as well as pilots in Australia, the UAE and Latin America, and is part of Mastercard’s ongoing global commitment to responsible innovation and industry collaboration. Mastercard continues to work with leading technology partners and standards bodies to shape the future of agentic commerce worldwide.

FF NEWS TAKE: This milestone decisively moves the needle, transforming autonomous shopping from a concept into an authenticated, scalable reality. The strength of this launch lies in the framework’s foundation of interoperability, which enables seamless participation for banks and varied LLM providers. We must watch the subsequent scaling of the regional AI Centre of Excellence closely, as its success will determine how quickly this security standard forces competing payment schemes and local financial institutions to accelerate their own strategies for governed agent-led commerce across the Asia Pacific market.