Mastercard has completed its first live, authenticated agent-based payment transaction in Singapore, a milestone that advances autonomous AI commerce from proof of concept to everyday use.
Announced on March 4, 2026, the transaction was carried out in partnership with DBS and UOB, two of Southeast Asia’s largest banks. In the demonstration, an AI agent booked a ride to Singapore’s Changi Airport through hoppa, a global mobility provider, with the booking facilitated by CardInfoLink’s AI agent, which connects to hoppa’s taxi and airport limousine network.
The basis of the transaction was Mastercard Agent Pay, the company’s framework for secure AI-initiated purchases. Each transaction under Agent Pay uses a Mastercard Agentic Token, issued per agent, while consumer consent is captured explicitly and purchase confirmation secured through Mastercard Payment Passkeys.
Tokenised credentials authenticated with those passkeys ensured consumer verification and data protection.
When your AI agent pays the bill
What Mastercard, DBS, and UOB have demonstrated is an agentic payments chain: an AI agent that perceives a need, selects a service, initiates a financial transaction, and completes it, without a human clicking “confirm.”
The transaction offers one answer: tokenisation, passkey authentication, and explicit consent layers from the outset. Minsook Cho, country manager for Singapore at Mastercard, said: “Mastercard’s first live agentic transaction shows how innovation can be brought into everyday services responsibly and securely with Agent Pay.”
Singapore, and the wider APAC race
This isn’t Mastercard’s first ‘agentic rodeo’ in Asia Pacific. The company has completed similar authenticated transactions in Australia, New Zealand, and India. But Singapore carries particular weight. Mastercard is establishing a regional AI Centre of Excellence in the country and is deploying dedicated agentic commerce teams in APAC to support financial institutions and merchants as they transition to agent-led experiences.
It’s also worth noting that Singapore’s major banks are moving in multiple directions. DBS completeda separate agentic payments pilot with Visa in February 2026, where AI agents executed food and beverage transactions using DBS and POSB cards.
The fact that the same bank appears in both Mastercard and Visa’s agentic milestones in weeks of each other speaks to how aggressively Singapore’s financial institutions are positioning. Mastercard says it will expand Agent Pay use cases in transportation, travel and retail sectors where the friction of manual payment steps may be an issue. The infrastructure for AI agents to spend on your behalf is being built, and the ride to Changi Airport was just the first stop.
See also: DBS pilots system that lets AI agents make payments for customers
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