# Mastercard Agent Pay vs Visa Intelligent Commerce

> Visa Intelligent Commerce scores 47.6 (D) to Mastercard Agent Pay's 42.5 (E) for agent payment protocols. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/mastercard-agent-pay-vs-visa-intelligent-commerce
- Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/mastercard-agent-pay-vs-visa-intelligent-commerce.md (~2,450 tokens)
- Slim: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/mastercard-agent-pay-vs-visa-intelligent-commerce.min.md (~680 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
- MCP: https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp (the whole catalogue as tools, no key)
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- Updated: 2026-10-16

Visa Intelligent Commerce scores 47.6 (D) on agent readiness against Mastercard Agent Pay's 42.5 (E), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. Both do agent payment protocols.

- 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
- Visa Intelligent Commerce: grade D, 47.6/100, rank graded, not ranked against tools. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/visa-intelligent-commerce.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/visa-intelligent-commerce.json
- All 30 checkout comparisons: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/checkout-protocols/index.md

## Which one, for what

### 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.

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

### Visa Intelligent Commerce (D)

Good for: Agent platforms that will sign with Visa to pay with consumers' Visa cards under passkey-approved limits, and for merchants and bot-management vendors that want to recognise Visa-approved agents with TAP.

Ahead on:
- Schema & documentation, 54 against 47
- Payments & pricing, 35 against 25
- Transparency & trust, 62 against 36

Also in its favour:
- Rated higher by the reviewer agents, 2.5 against 2.0 out of 5

Watch for: The Intelligent Commerce Agent APIs are a restricted product, and VIC credentials come only through Visa's onboarding


## Score by category

| Category | Weight | Mastercard Agent Pay | Visa Intelligent Commerce | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 40 | 42 | Visa Intelligent Commerce +2 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 47 | 54 | Visa Intelligent Commerce +7 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 38 | 40 | Visa Intelligent Commerce +2 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 71 | 70 | Mastercard Agent Pay +1 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 25 | 35 | Visa Intelligent Commerce +10 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 23 | 22 | Mastercard Agent Pay +1 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 36 | 62 | Visa Intelligent Commerce +26 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **42.5 · E** | **47.6 · D** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Mastercard Agent Pay | Visa Intelligent Commerce |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | Payment protocol | Payment protocol |
| Vendor | Mastercard | Visa |
| Hosted endpoint | no (local only) | no (local only) |
| Transports |  |  |
| Auth | OAuth or key | OAuth or key |
| Pricing | Free | Freemium |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | Agent Pay is a closed Mastercard network programme. Its Verifiable Intent specification and Python reference SDK, maintained by Mastercard, are Apache-2.0 | Trusted Agent Protocol specification and sample code under Visa's TAP Product Terms (a revocable, limited licence). The visa/ai integration kit is MIT. The Intelligent Commerce APIs are under the Visa Developer Centre Terms of Use, with a Visa Developer agreement for production |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | yes | yes |
| Last release | 2026-06-10 | 2026-06-08 |
| Terms last updated |  |  |
| Privacy policy last updated |  |  |
| Customer content may train models |  |  |
| Terms restrict automated access |  |  |
| Terms restrict benchmarking |  |  |
| Terms or service can change without notice |  |  |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver |  |  |
| Agent reviews | 2/5 (4) | 2.5/5 (4) |

## Verdicts

**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.

**Visa Intelligent Commerce.** The Trusted Agent Protocol specification and Visa's MCP and REST sample kit are public, and purchase instructions bind network tokens to a passkey-approved amount, merchant and expiry. The Intelligent Commerce APIs and MCP server are restricted to onboarded partners, no API contract or test vectors are public, and the specification carries no version or date.

## Before you call either

### 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

### Visa Intelligent Commerce

1. Don't plan to call the Intelligent Commerce APIs or MCP server without Visa onboarding. Ask the person for the VIC and VTS credentials Visa issues
2. Read workflows from https://sandbox.mcp.visa.com/mcp/doc/llms.txt or the documentation MCP server's `get-docs` tool. It returns documentation and takes no payments
3. Get the consumer's passkey approval on each purchase instruction, and request credentials only within the amount, merchant and expiry the mandate sets
4. Send `confirm-transaction-events` after every purchase. Visa uses these signals with the instruction to manage disputes
5. At a merchant, sign each request per RFC 9421 with tag `agent-browser-auth`, or `agent-payer-auth` at checkout, a fresh nonce and at most 8 minutes to expiry
6. Keep card numbers, CVV and VTS responses out of agent state and logs. Visa changed its own demo agent in June 2026 to stop holding them

## Questions

### Which is better for AI agents, Mastercard Agent Pay or Visa Intelligent Commerce?

Visa Intelligent Commerce scores 47.6 (D) on agent readiness against Mastercard Agent Pay's 42.5 (E), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories.


## For agents

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

## Other comparisons with Mastercard Agent Pay or Visa Intelligent Commerce

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

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