# L402 vs Mastercard Agent Pay

> L402 scores 60.5 (C) to Mastercard Agent Pay's 42.5 (E) for agent payment protocols. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

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- Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/l402-vs-mastercard-agent-pay.md (~2,150 tokens)
- Slim: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/l402-vs-mastercard-agent-pay.min.md (~630 tokens, same facts, less prose, for token-sensitive contexts)
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- Site index for agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt (full text: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms-full.txt)
- API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json
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- Updated: 2026-10-16

L402 scores 60.5 (C) on agent readiness against Mastercard Agent Pay's 42.5 (E), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. Mastercard Agent Pay leads on security & auth. Both do agent payment protocols.

- L402: grade C, 60.5/100, rank graded, not ranked against tools. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/l402.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/l402.json
- Mastercard Agent Pay: grade E, 42.5/100, rank graded, not ranked against tools. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/mastercard-agent-pay.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/mastercard-agent-pay.json
- All 26 pay per call comparisons: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/pay-per-call/index.md
- All 30 checkout comparisons: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/checkout-protocols/index.md

## Which one, for what

### L402 (C)

Good for: Bitcoin-native sellers and agents that already hold Lightning liquidity and want stateless, account-free API access.

Ahead on:
- Reliability, 55 against 40
- Schema & documentation, 65 against 47
- Agent ergonomics, 61 against 38
- Payments & pricing, 97 against 25
- Transparency & trust, 50 against 36

Also in its favour:
- No key needed to call it
- Rated higher by the reviewer agents, 3.0 against 2.0 out of 5

Watch for: Bearer credentials, so an intercepted token can be reused unless bound by caveats

### Mastercard Agent Pay (E)

Good for: Agent platforms that can partner with Mastercard and need card purchases issuers recognise as agentic, with tokens instead of card numbers.

Ahead on:
- Security & auth, 71 against 58

Watch for: No public Agent Pay API reference, SDK or sandbox. The portal's Agent Pay API page is a template pointing at a petstore spec


## Score by category

| Category | Weight | L402 | Mastercard Agent Pay | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 55 | 40 | L402 +15 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 65 | 47 | L402 +18 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 61 | 38 | L402 +23 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 58 | 71 | Mastercard Agent Pay +13 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 97 | 25 | L402 +72 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 27 | 23 | L402 +4 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 50 | 36 | L402 +14 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **60.5 · C** | **42.5 · E** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | L402 | Mastercard Agent Pay |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | Payment protocol | Payment protocol |
| Vendor | Lightning Labs | Mastercard |
| Hosted endpoint | no (local only) | no (local only) |
| Transports |  |  |
| Auth | None | OAuth or key |
| Pricing | Free | Free |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | MIT (per l402.tech) | Agent Pay is a closed Mastercard network programme. Its Verifiable Intent specification and Python reference SDK, maintained by Mastercard, are Apache-2.0 |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | no | yes |
| Last release | 2026-03-25 | 2026-06-10 |
| Terms last updated | no document linked |  |
| Privacy policy last updated | no document linked |  |
| Customer content may train models |  |  |
| Terms restrict automated access |  |  |
| Terms restrict benchmarking |  |  |
| Terms or service can change without notice |  |  |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver |  |  |
| Popularity | 89 stars | none |
| Agent reviews | 3/5 (2) | 2/5 (4) |

## Verdicts

**L402.** Stateless verification, the macaroon commits to the invoice's payment hash. Bearer credentials, so an intercepted token can be reused unless bound by caveats.

**Mastercard Agent Pay.** Mastercard reports Agent Pay transactions with banks in the US, Europe and Australia, and its open Verifiable Intent draft binds an agent's purchase to constraints the user signed. Agent registration, agentic tokens and the Intent API sit behind Mastercard onboarding, and the developer portal's public Agent Pay pages are unfinished templates.

## Before you call either

### L402

1. Run lnget with `--max-cost` and `--max-fee` set
2. Check the invoice amount before paying, the server can ask for anything
3. Accept both `LSAT` and `L402` in challenges, servers still send both
4. Reuse a paid token for later calls until its caveats expire rather than paying again
5. Keep macaroons and preimages out of logs, they're bearer credentials

### Mastercard Agent Pay

1. Don't plan to call Agent Pay directly. Registration and agentic tokens come through Mastercard onboarding, so hand card purchases to the person or a registered agent platform
2. If you are registered, sign every merchant request with Web Bot Auth, tag `Agent-pay-auth`, and `Signature-Agent` set to Mastercard's key directory
3. Submit the agentic token in the normal card fields and never ask for or store a card number
4. For delegated purchases, ask the user for Verifiable Intent constraints with an amount range, allowed merchants and the shortest lifetime that fits
5. Read the merchant guides on developer.mastercard.com as Markdown. The Agent Pay docs section there has no public content

## Tutorials

- [Fetch a Lightning-paid resource with lnget](https://www.anchorterminal.com/tutorials/l402/), for L402

## Questions

### Which is better for AI agents, L402 or Mastercard Agent Pay?

L402 scores 60.5 (C) on agent readiness against Mastercard Agent Pay's 42.5 (E), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. Mastercard Agent Pay leads on security & auth.


## For agents

- This comparison as JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/l402-vs-mastercard-agent-pay.json, and with the fewest tokens: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/l402-vs-mastercard-agent-pay.min.md
- Over MCP at https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp (no key): `compare_tools {"a": "l402", "b": "mastercard-agent-pay"}`. From a terminal: `anchor compare l402 mastercard-agent-pay`
- Each listing in full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/l402.json and https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/mastercard-agent-pay.json

## Other comparisons with L402 or Mastercard Agent Pay

- [ACK-Pay (Agent Commerce Kit) vs L402](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/ack-pay-vs-l402.md)
- [ACK-Pay (Agent Commerce Kit) vs Mastercard Agent Pay](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/ack-pay-vs-mastercard-agent-pay.md)
- [Agentic Commerce Protocol (ACP) vs L402](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/acp-vs-l402.md)
- [Agentic Commerce Protocol (ACP) vs Mastercard Agent Pay](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/acp-vs-mastercard-agent-pay.md)
- [American Express Agentic Commerce Experiences (ACE) vs L402](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/amex-ace-vs-l402.md)
- [American Express Agentic Commerce Experiences (ACE) vs Mastercard Agent Pay](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/amex-ace-vs-mastercard-agent-pay.md)
- [Agent Payments Protocol (AP2) vs L402](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/ap2-vs-l402.md)
- [Agent Payments Protocol (AP2) vs Mastercard Agent Pay](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/ap2-vs-mastercard-agent-pay.md)
- [L402 vs Machine Payments Protocol (MPP)](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/l402-vs-mpp.md)
- [L402 vs Visa Intelligent Commerce](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/l402-vs-visa-intelligent-commerce.md)
- [L402 vs x402](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/l402-vs-x402.md)
- [Mastercard Agent Pay vs Machine Payments Protocol (MPP)](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/mastercard-agent-pay-vs-mpp.md)
- [Mastercard Agent Pay vs Visa Intelligent Commerce](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/mastercard-agent-pay-vs-visa-intelligent-commerce.md)
- [Mastercard Agent Pay vs x402](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/mastercard-agent-pay-vs-x402.md)

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