Worldline [Euronext: WLN], European leader in payment services, and ING, a global financial institution with a strong presence in Europe, within the framework of Money20/20, announce the successful execution of the first end-to-end European agent payment carried out in a production environment together with Mastercard
The operation was carried out between an ING cardholder and a merchant in the Netherlands. The solution uses the same technological infrastructure deployed in Belgium and operates over Mastercard's network, leveraging the secure authentication and authorization mechanisms of each of the participants. This milestone demonstrates that payments initiated and authenticated by artificial intelligence agents of merchants can function integrally across different European markets.
"Agent commerce has ceased to be a theoretical concept to become a production-ready reality. Thanks to Worldline's platform, this transaction demonstrates that we have fully operational capabilities on a pan-European scale in acceptance, acquiring, authentication, and issuing processing. Together with ING and Mastercard, we are making agent payments a secure, seamless, and real experience," states Madalena Cascais Tomé, Member of the Worldline Executive Committee.
As agent commerce gains momentum and major international card schemes and financial institutions develop operational frameworks and specific orchestration standards, the question is no longer whether this technology works, but whether it can generate trust on a large scale. The transaction carried out by Worldline and ING offers a tangible and verifiable answer.
In this case, an ING customer searches the internet for a gift to celebrate a wedding anniversary. The merchant's artificial intelligence agent identifies concert tickets within the established budget, presents a personalized selection, and completes the purchase only after receiving explicit consumer approval.
Authentication is carried out through consolidated security mechanisms, in which ING, as the issuing bank, plays a fundamental role in authorizing the operation, while Worldline processes the payment from beginning to end through its issuing and acquiring platforms.
The central element of this model is consumer approval, who maintains control of the final purchase decision at all times. The transaction incorporates specific identifiers that allow its agentic nature to be recognized, providing total transparency to the issuing bank, which retains control through authentication and authorization processes. This guarantees the necessary security and trust, while allowing the payment to be processed smoothly and fully traceable throughout the entire transaction chain.
"We are excited about this concrete step towards a future where intelligent and frictionless interactions transform the way we engage with banking and e-commerce. For ING, this collaboration represents an excellent opportunity to lay the foundation for our role as a trusted partner in an increasingly agentic environment. We want agentic commerce to become an excellent experience for both our retail customers and businesses," says Hans Overeem, Head of Payments at ING Netherlands.
"We are witnessing the next evolution of digital commerce, where trusted agents can act on behalf of consumers securely and transparently. This milestone demonstrates how Mastercard Agent Pay can enable scalable and interoperable agentic payments, supported by common control mechanisms across the network and reinforced by robust authentication and network-level protections. More importantly, Mastercard is laying the groundwork for this ecosystem to function at scale: agents onboard under defined standards and controls, merchants operate through consistent integration frameworks, and issuers maintain full visibility and control over every transaction. With Agent Pay, we ensure that innovation can grow securely, based on trust, aligned among all ecosystem players, and ready for real-world deployment," explains Brice van de Walle, Executive Vice President, Core Payments Europe at Mastercard.
Beyond this specific operation, the pilot demonstrates that both the technology and the business processes necessary for agent payments are already prepared to function on a European infrastructure in production, coordinating networks, markets, and use cases. Likewise, it lays the groundwork for exploring future applications, such as recurring payments or delegated purchases within previously defined parameters.