What is Mastercard's AI strategy?
Mastercard presents AI as a layer across its network and services rather than a separate business. In his 2025 shareholder letter, published April 27, 2026, CEO Michael Miebach tied the strategy to data, citing "15-plus petabytes of structured, clean, usable data", and named Agent Pay, Verifiable Intent and Agent Suite as its agentic tools. Miebach told Fortune in May 2025 that Mastercard had been "investing heavily in AI" for "the better part of 10 years" and had invested $7 billion in seven years in defenses; at a November 12, 2025 conference he said generative AI now also powers its consulting analytics. Greg Ulrich, chief AI and data officer since an April 2024 realignment created a Data and AI organisation, said in July 2026 that about 40% of the company is services and "a third of those are predicated on AI"; in October 2026 he said more than 80% of employees use AI regularly. The product record runs from Decision Intelligence Pro (February 2024) through Agent Pay (April 2025) to a transaction foundation model built with Nvidia and Databricks (March 2026). Partners on the record include Databricks, Nvidia, Microsoft, OpenAI, Google and Anthropic, whose Mythos model Mastercard tested under Project Glasswing. The FY2025 10-K lists AI regulation, including the EU AI Act, and biased or inaccurate AI outcomes among its risks. Mastercard does not disclose an AI budget, AI headcount or revenue from AI products.[1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10]
Data as of Oct 22, 2026 · Mastercard profile updated Oct 22, 2026 · 25 sources cited on this page · 52 fintechs profiled on this site · Markdown
What have Mastercard's CEO and AI leaders said about AI, and when?
In date order. Quotes are as published by the source named in the last column; earnings-call lines come from The Motley Fool's transcripts.
| Statement or move | Who | When | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| A company realignment creates a Data and AI organisation covering commercialisation of internal and external AI applications and enterprise-wide AI governance | Greg Ulrich, appointed chief AI and data officer | April 9, 2024 | Mastercard press release[4] |
| Targets high-teens growth in value-added services and solutions net revenue for 2025 to 2027; the data slide cites 15+ petabytes and "Artificial Intelligence deployed at scale" | Mastercard management | November 13, 2024 | Investment Community Meeting[11] |
| "For the better part of 10 years, we have been investing heavily in AI"; "we invested $7 billion in the last seven years to up our defenses for the industry" | Michael Miebach, CEO | May 14, 2025 | Fortune, Leadership Next[2] |
| The first agentic transaction ran on Mastercard's network in the quarter; U.S. Bank and Citibank cardholders could use Agent Pay, with the rest of U.S. issuers due in November and a global rollout early in 2026; value-added services revenue grew 25%, per American Banker | Michael Miebach, CEO | October 30, 2025 | Q3 2025 earnings call[12][13] |
| Mastercard has used AI "for about a decade", first machine learning, then generative AI, now also for the analytics behind its consulting business; one third of its services are AI-powered | Michael Miebach, CEO | November 12, 2025 | KBW Fintech Payments Conference[3] |
| "With 15-plus petabytes of structured, clean, usable data, Mastercard is at the forefront"; Mastercard is "at the forefront of setting standards and guidelines for responsible AI" | Michael Miebach, CEO | April 27, 2026 | 2025 shareholder letter[1] |
| About 40% of the company is services and "a third of those are predicated on AI"; generative AI finds "300, 400% more fraudulent transactions" in high-risk bands | Greg Ulrich, chief AI and data officer | July 14, 2026 (reported July 30) | VB Transform 2026[5] |
| "Agentic Commerce creates a significant opportunity for Mastercard"; "we expect cards will prevail in an agentic world" | Michael Miebach, CEO | July 30, 2026 | Q2 2026 earnings call[14] |
| More than 80% of employees use AI regularly; a new AI Learning Hub offers role-based learning paths; AI work is organised around foundations, employees, customers and commerce | Greg Ulrich, chief AI and data officer | October 21, 2026 | Forbes interview[6] |
Which AI products has Mastercard shipped, and in what order?
Named products and services only; dates are Mastercard's announcement dates.
| Product | What it does | Built on | Since |
|---|---|---|---|
| Decision Intelligence Pro | Generative AI fraud scoring at authorisation: scans one trillion data points and returns a score in under 50 milliseconds | Mastercard network transaction data | February 1, 2024[7] |
| Gen AI onboarding assistant | Knowledge agent answering customer onboarding questions, using a large language model with retrieval augmented generation | Databricks Data Intelligence Platform | October 29, 2024[15] |
| Agent Pay | Registered, verified AI agents pay with Agentic Tokens within consumer-set limits | Mastercard tokenization; launched with a Microsoft collaboration (Azure OpenAI Service, Copilot Studio) | April 29, 2025[8] |
| Agent Toolkit, Agent Sign-Up, Insight Tokens | Lets AI assistants read Mastercard's API documentation, identify their agents and use permissioned Mastercard insights | Model Context Protocol server; works with Claude, Cursor and GitHub Copilot | September 10, 2025[16] |
| Mastercard Threat Intelligence | Joins Mastercard fraud insights with threat intelligence to detect attacks that lead to payment fraud | Recorded Future, acquired for $2.7 billion | October 27, 2025[17][10] |
| Agent Suite | Customizable AI agents for banks (product discovery) and merchants (conversational shopping), slated for the second quarter of 2026 | Mastercard data, backed by 4,000 global advisors | January 27, 2026[18] |
| Large tabular foundation model | Generative model trained on billions of anonymized transactions; cybersecurity is the first target | Nvidia and Databricks | March 17, 2026[9] |
| Agent Pay for Machines | Permissioned, settled machine-to-machine payments for agents buying digital services, some worth fractions of a cent | Cards, accounts and stablecoins; early access built on the x402 protocol | June 10, 2026[19] |
| Mastercard Max | AI benefits assistant embedded in an issuer's own channel, launching with C6 Bank in Brazil | Issuer digital channels | October 21, 2026[20] |
Where does AI sit inside Mastercard, what do its filings say, and what is not disclosed?
AI is run from a central Data and AI organisation under Greg Ulrich, created in April 2024 to commercialise AI applications and govern AI across the company. Ulrich describes his job as ensuring "data and AI create measurable value for our customers and across Mastercard" and says leadership tracks workforce adoption, productivity, customer outcomes and market leadership to judge whether AI pays off.[4][6]
Inside the company, Ulrich told VB Transform in July 2026 that Mastercard built an "agentic factory" with compliance, observability and guardrails built in, and automated model-drift tracking that dedicated teams once did by hand. He said Mastercard was in the early wave of Anthropic's Project Glasswing with the Mythos model and worked with OpenAI's GPT-5.5-Cyber, calling them "a new tool as opposed to a new motion".[5]
The FY2025 10-K lists "Data & AI" among the enablers of its strategy, says it uses AI to enhance operations and employee productivity, describes Privacy by Design, Data by Design and AI Governance processes, and notes patents and applications relating to AI.[10]
The same filing's risk factors say that as a user and deployer of AI Mastercard is subject to laws including the EU AI Act, that how its AI use will be regulated is still developing, that uncertainty remains as to how AI "(such as in agentic commerce)" will continue to advance, and that AI algorithms "may generate inaccurate, unintended, unfair, biased or discriminatory outcomes".[10]
What is not disclosed: a dedicated AI budget or capital spending figure (the $7 billion Miebach cited covers defenses generally), AI headcount, revenue from AI-powered services, which large language models power Agent Suite or Mastercard Max, and results for the foundation model.[2][10][18][9]
What does the Mastercard profile record on this topic?
The rows below are the entries of the Mastercard AI strategy profile that bear on this page, as of Oct 22, 2026; the profile holds the full record of 18 dated moves, 10 use cases and 25 sources.
| Use case | What the record shows | Status | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mastercard Max benefits assistant | Conversational AI that surfaces and explains card benefits in context, embedded in an issuer's own channel; launching with C6 Bank in Brazil, with SNB Group, Nedbank, I&M Bank and Attijariwafa Bank also working to offer it. | Rolling out | [20] |
| Decision Intelligence Pro | Generative-AI enhancement to real-time transaction fraud scoring that assesses relationships between entities around a payment; Mastercard reports a 20% average improvement in fraud detection from initial modelling. | Announced | [7] |
| Large tabular foundation model | Transaction foundation model trained on billions of anonymized transactions with Nvidia and Databricks; being tested for hybrid cybersecurity and fraud systems and to reduce the thousands of separate models Mastercard maintains. | Pilot | [9] |
| Agent Suite and Virtual C-Suite | Customizable AI agents for banks (product discovery) and merchants (conversational shopping), plus AI 'digital executives' for small businesses; announced January and March 2026. | Announced | [18][21] |
| Enterprise AI governance | A Data and AI organisation under the chief AI and data officer governs AI across the enterprise; Mastercard applies its Data and Tech Responsibility Principles and says models must be explainable, governed and continuously monitored. | In production | [4][22][10] |
| Date | Move | Detail | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Oct 21, 2026 | Mastercard Max launches with C6 Bank | An AI-powered benefits assistant that surfaces relevant card benefits, explains them and guides cardholders to use them in context (e.g. lounge access while traveling), embedded in the issuer's own digital channel. Launching first with C6 Bank in Brazil; SNB Group, Nedbank, I&M Bank and Attijariwafa Bank are working to offer it, and Citi is exploring it for Singapore and Hong Kong. | [20] |
| Mar 17, 2026 | Large tabular foundation model disclosed | Mastercard describes a generative foundation model trained on billions of anonymized transactions with Nvidia and Databricks; early tests beat standard machine-learning techniques on rare legitimate purchases, and cybersecurity is the first target. | [9] |
| Mar 10, 2026 | Virtual C-Suite for small businesses | An extension of Agent Suite that gives small businesses AI agents acting as digital executives, starting with a Virtual CFO, drawing on insights from the 175 billion transactions Mastercard processed in 2025. | [21] |
| Jan 29, 2026 | About 4% of staff affected by restructuring | Alongside Q4 2025 results, Mastercard says a corporate restructuring will affect about 4% of its global staff, and that it has enabled U.S.-based issuers to support agentic commerce; the $202 million pre-tax restructuring charge, intended to enable reinvestment, was taken in Q1 2026 (it appears in the Q2 release's six-month column). | [23][24][25] |
| Jan 27, 2026 | Mastercard Agent Suite announced | A set of services to build, test and deploy customizable AI agents for banks and merchants, backed by 4,000 global advisors, slated for availability in the second quarter of 2026. | [18] |
| Apr 9, 2024 | Data and AI organisation created | A company realignment creates a Data and AI organisation led by Greg Ulrich as chief AI and data officer, covering commercialisation of internal and external AI applications and enterprise-wide governance. | [4] |
| Feb 1, 2024 | Decision Intelligence Pro announced | Mastercard applies generative AI to its Decision Intelligence fraud-scoring service, which already scores 143 billion transactions a year; DI Pro scans one trillion data points and returns a score in under 50 milliseconds. Mastercard says initial modelling shows fraud detection up 20% on average. | [7] |
Who leads AI at Mastercard?
Greg Ulrich is chief AI and data officer. He has led a Data and AI organisation since an April 2024 realignment that put commercialisation of AI applications and enterprise-wide AI governance under one team. CEO Michael Miebach sets the strategic framing, and chief product officer Jorn Lambert fronts Agent Pay and Agent Pay for Machines.
How much of Mastercard's business runs on AI?
Mastercard gives a share rather than revenue. Ulrich said in July 2026 that about 40% of the company is services and that a third of those are predicated on AI and growing faster than the rest. Miebach said the same one-third figure at a November 2025 conference. No AI revenue figure is published.
Which AI companies does Mastercard work with?
On the record: Databricks (an onboarding assistant in 2024 and, with Nvidia, a transaction foundation model in 2026), Microsoft (Agent Pay's April 2025 launch), OpenAI (ChatGPT checkout and GPT-5.5-Cyber testing), Google (Verifiable Intent and its agent protocols) and Anthropic, whose Mythos model Mastercard tested under Project Glasswing.
What does Mastercard's 10-K say about AI risk?
The FY2025 10-K says Mastercard is subject to AI laws including the EU AI Act as a user and deployer of AI, that regulation of AI in agentic commerce is still uncertain, and that AI may produce inaccurate, biased or discriminatory outcomes that are hard to detect or explain, or disclose confidential information.
How many Mastercard employees use AI?
Ulrich told Forbes in October 2026 that more than 80% of employees use AI regularly, supported by a new AI Learning Hub with role-based learning paths. Mastercard has not published the number of internal AI tools, its spending on them or measured productivity gains beyond qualitative descriptions.
- 2025 Annual letter to shareholders (Michael Miebach)
- Why Mastercard CEO Michael Miebach believes the future of payments is in the hands of consumers (Leadership Next)
- Mastercard at KBW Fintech Payments Conference: Strategic Insights and Future Plans
- Positioning Mastercard for the next era of growth
- Mastercard spent decades training its fraud system to see bots as thieves. Now bots are the ones doing the buying.
- Mastercard Is Delivering Business And Customer Value From Data And AI
- Mastercard supercharges consumer protection with gen AI
- Mastercard unveils Agent Pay, pioneering agentic payments technology to power commerce in the age of AI
- Meet Mastercard's new generative AI model
- Mastercard Incorporated Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2025
- Mastercard 2024 Investment Community Meeting (presentation)
- Mastercard Q3 2025 earnings call transcript
- Mastercard makes agentic AI a star of its services strategy
- Mastercard (MA) Q2 2026 earnings call transcript
- Mastercard launches new gen AI digital assistant capabilities to enhance customer value
- Mastercard Unveils New Tools and Collaborations to Power Smarter, Safer Agentic Commerce
- Mastercard Introduces First-Ever Threat Intelligence Solution to Combat Payment Fraud at Scale
- Mastercard launches Agent Suite to ready enterprises for a new era
- Mastercard launches Agent Pay for Machines to unlock super-fast, always-on payments
- Mastercard Max makes benefits easy to discover, understand and use
- Mastercard advances its agentic AI strategy with Virtual C-Suite, bringing executive level intelligence to small businesses
- AI is easy to celebrate. It's much harder to run
- Mastercard's CEO wades into affordability debate
- Mastercard Incorporated First-Quarter 2026 Financial Results (Form 8-K, Exhibit 99.1)
- Mastercard Incorporated Second-Quarter 2026 Financial Results (Form 8-K, Exhibit 99.1)
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