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Mastercard Chief Digital Officer Pablo Fourez says consumers are likely to give AI agents purchasing authority gradually, starting with transactions they can review and trust. He says merchants will need to make product, price and inventory information accessible to agents, while payment systems must connect shoppers, authorized agents and merchants.
Mastercard Chief Digital Officer Pablo Fourez says shoppers are likely to grant AI agents more purchasing authority one successful transaction at a time, rather than allowing unrestricted buying from the outset. In an interview with PYMNTS CEO Karen Webster, he also said merchants will need to make catalogs, prices and current inventory available in formats agents can use to find and compare products.
Fourez described a cautious start: a shopper might ask an agent to find and purchase an airline ticket, then check the fare, refund terms and seat selection before deciding whether to rely on it again. If the agent repeatedly follows instructions, the consumer may feel less need to approve each step. “There’s going to be a gradual consumer adoption,” Fourez said. “Initially, you may ask [the agent] to confirm the purchase before it executes it.”
How much a person delegates will depend on the purchase, Fourez said. He gave the example of Paul Smith striped socks, a familiar product he would be comfortable letting an agent buy. A recurring grocery order could also be suitable: an agent might learn preferred brands, use a requested recipe to assemble a shopping list and place the order. Fourez said he might still want to choose the wine himself.
Fourez and Webster discussed a broader role for agents beyond placing orders. An agent could compare retailer offers and payment benefits to help a shopper decide where to buy and which payment method to use. That is a possibility discussed in the interview, not a claim that such features are already broadly available. The interview was conducted in early September and published by PYMNTS on October 8, 2026.
The development matters because agent-led shopping would change who interacts with a merchant and initiates a payment. Rather than a shopper navigating each purchase directly, software acting with consumer permission could search, select and order products. The model depends on shoppers believing the agent followed their instructions, and on merchants and payment providers being able to recognize and process a transaction authorized by that agent.
Fourez’s examples point to a likely distinction between routine and preference-sensitive purchases. Reordering familiar household goods may be easier to delegate than choosing an unfamiliar product or making a decision the shopper wants to control personally. Consumer authorization is not all-or-nothing: people may set different limits by product, transaction or stage of the purchase. The interview does not establish how common agent purchases are or how quickly consumers will adopt them.
For businesses, the practical consequence is that an agent may need timely, usable information before it can make a reliable recommendation or complete an order. A product listing that is difficult for software to interpret, or information that does not reflect current stock and prices, could complicate the purchase. The scale of those effects remains unquantified in the source.
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Merchants Prepare for a New Channel
Fourez characterized agentic commerce as another channel for shopping and compared the changes it could bring with the shift from desktop to mobile commerce. In his account, that earlier shift required merchants to rethink how customers reached them and payment providers to adapt transactions for phones. He argued that agent-led shopping may likewise call for changes in how merchants present and update their offerings.
For agents to evaluate a merchant’s offer, Fourez said, product catalogs, pricing and live inventory must be accessible in a usable form. He also described a broader ecosystem linking the consumer, the merchant and the payment credential, with systems able to connect the shopper’s identity to the agent acting for them. The interview outlines these needs as considerations for the channel; it does not identify a new Mastercard product launch or provide a deployment timetable.
““There’s going to be a gradual consumer adoption.””
— Pablo Fourez, Mastercard chief digital officer
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Adoption and Safeguards Remain Open
The interview does not specify how many consumers currently use AI agents to make purchases, how often those transactions succeed, or what adoption timeline Mastercard expects. It also provides no measurements of merchant readiness or evidence that shoppers generally become comfortable after a particular number of successful orders. Fourez’s examples express his view of how trust could develop, not a forecast supported by survey data in the report.
Specific technical and operational arrangements also remain unsettled in the material. It does not lay out common standards for identifying an agent, recording the limits of a consumer’s permission, handling disputes, or assigning responsibility when an agent makes an error. The interview raises the need to connect consumer, agent and merchant identities but does not explain how that would work across payment systems.
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Merchant and Payment Systems Adapt
The next developments will depend on whether merchants make product data and inventory information available in forms agents can evaluate, and whether payment systems can reliably associate an agent’s actions with a shopper’s authorization. Fourez’s account points to those areas as requirements for the channel, but the interview does not announce a specific implementation schedule or next milestone.
Consumers’ experience with early purchases will also shape how much control they choose to delegate. For now, the confirmed development is Mastercard’s view, shared through Fourez’s PYMNTS interview, that trust may build through repeated transactions. How quickly that happens, and what safeguards or infrastructure become standard, remain open questions.
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Key Questions
What did Mastercard announce?
The PYMNTS report describes comments by Mastercard Chief Digital Officer Pablo Fourez about how consumer trust in AI shopping agents may develop. It does not report a new Mastercard product launch.
How might shoppers begin using AI agents to buy things?
Fourez suggested that a shopper might first require the agent to seek approval before placing an order, then grant more authority after seeing it follow instructions across repeat purchases. This is his description of a possible pattern, not a measured finding about current users.
What information would merchants need to provide?
Fourez said agents need access to product catalogs, prices and current inventory to find and evaluate items. The interview does not specify a shared technical format or deadline for providing that information.
Will consumers let agents make every purchasing decision?
Not necessarily. Fourez said consumers may be more comfortable delegating familiar, repeat purchases while keeping control over decisions such as selecting wine. He and Webster described the level of authority as a choice for the consumer.
What is still unknown about agent-led shopping?
The report gives no adoption figures or timeline and does not set out common rules for agent identity, permission limits or handling errors and disputes. Those questions are not resolved by the interview.
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