What is Mastercard's role in the digital payments transformation?
Mastercard is a card network moving onto other rails. Its network carried $10.6 trillion of gross dollar volume and 175.5 billion switched transactions in 2025, up 9% (local currency) and 10%, against $9.8 trillion and 159.4 billion in 2024; cross-border volume grew 15% in 2025, and GDV reached $2.9 trillion in the second quarter of 2026, up 8%. The way people pay is changing on the network: contactless accounted for more than 75% of Mastercard transactions in 2025, and about 40% of all transactions were tokenized, up from about 30% in 2024, with a goal of 100% e-commerce tokenization in Europe by 2030. The FY2025 10-K describes a multi-rail strategy across cards, real-time payments and account-based transactions: Vocalink runs the UK's Faster Payments and Bacs systems, Mastercard Move reaches more than 17 billion payout endpoints, and Mastercard completed its purchase of stablecoin infrastructure firm BVNK on August 3, 2026, after agreeing to pay up to $1.8 billion. AI enters as the safety layer on faster rails: by July 2025, 15 banks representing 90% of UK account-to-account payments used Mastercard's AI scam scoring.[1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9]
Data as of Oct 19, 2026 · Mastercard profile updated Oct 19, 2026 · 28 sources cited on this page · 52 fintechs profiled on this site · Markdown
How much does Mastercard's network carry, and how fast is it growing?
From Mastercard's 10-K filings and quarterly earnings releases (8-K Exhibit 99.1). Growth rates are on a local currency basis where Mastercard reports them that way.
| Metric | Value | Period |
|---|---|---|
| Gross dollar volume (GDV) | $10.6 trillion, up 9% | 2025[1] |
| Gross dollar volume (GDV) | $9.8 trillion, up 11% | 2024[2][1] |
| Switched transactions | 175.5 billion in 2025 (up 10%); 159.4 billion in 2024 (up 11%) | 2024–2025[1][2] |
| Cross-border volume growth | 15% in 2025; 18% in 2024 | 2024–2025[1] |
| GDV by program | Consumer debit and prepaid $5,349 billion (50%); consumer credit $3,878 billion (37%); commercial $1,405 billion (13%) | 2025[1] |
| Mastercard-branded cards by program | Consumer debit and prepaid 2,134 million (up 11%); consumer credit 1,083 million; commercial 174 million | December 31, 2025[1] |
| GDV and cross-border, Q1 2026 | GDV $2.7 trillion, up 7%; cross-border volume up 13% | Q1 2026[10] |
| GDV, cross-border and transactions, Q2 2026 | GDV $2.9 trillion, up 8%; cross-border volume up 12%; switched transactions up 9% | Q2 2026[3] |
| Acceptance | Approximately 150 million acceptance locations and over 250 million digital access points (the FY2025 10-K says "hundreds of millions") | FY2024 10-K[2][1] |
| Value-added services and solutions | Net revenue up 18% currency-neutral; approximately 40% of net revenue | Q1 2026[11] |
How is the way people pay on Mastercard's network changing?
| Shift | What Mastercard reports | Date |
|---|---|---|
| Contactless | Approximately 70% of in-person purchase transactions in 2024; 73% of in-person switched transactions in Q1 2025; more than 75% of Mastercard transactions in 2025 | 2024–2025[2][12][4] |
| Transit tap-to-ride | A 37% year-over-year jump in U.S. riders using cards already in their wallet to board transit | 2025[4] |
| Tokenization, global | 25% of e-commerce transactions (June 2024); approximately 30% of all transactions (2024); approximately 35% of switched transactions (Q1 2025); approximately 40% of all transactions (2025) | 2024–2025[5][2][12][1] |
| Tokenization, Europe | Goal of 100% e-commerce tokenization by 2030 (June 2024); nearly half of e-commerce transactions tokenised (June 2025); three in five (June 2026) | 2024–2026[5][13][14] |
| Click to Pay | Transactions almost doubled in 2024; available in 26 European markets in June 2025 and 32 in June 2026 | 2024–2026[2][13][14] |
| Tokenization and approvals | Where tokenization is live in Asia Pacific, approval rates have risen by up to 6%, generating more than USD 2 billion in additional merchant sales a month, per Mastercard | November 12, 2025[15] |
| Pay by Bank | Deutsche Bank's Merchant Solutions to offer Pay by Bank on Mastercard's open banking network; no volumes disclosed | June 3, 2025[16] |
Which non-card rails does Mastercard run or connect to?
The FY2025 10-K describes giving consumers "choice and flexibility to transact across multiple payment rails (including cards, real-time payments and account-based transactions)" and says Mastercard operates real-time payments infrastructure in several countries, without listing them.
| Rail | Mastercard's role | Date |
|---|---|---|
| UK Faster Payments, Bacs, Image Clearing | Vocalink processes more than £37 billion of payments a day for Pay.UK; nearly 12 billion transactions worth over £10 trillion ran through the three systems in 2024; contracts extended into the early 2030s | Undated release, retrieved October 19, 2026[6] |
| Vocalink supervision | Designated a specified service provider by the Bank of England; fined £11.9 million by the Bank of England on July 9, 2025, its first fine on a financial market infrastructure firm | 2025–2026[1][17] |
| Mastercard Move (payouts and remittances) | Payout reach of more than 10 billion endpoints (FY2024) and more than 17 billion (FY2025), in more than 60 originating and 155 receiving countries; transactions up 35% in Q1 2025 | 2024–2025[2][1][12] |
| A2A Protect | A protection and dispute service for account-to-account payments, launching first in the UK with Monzo, NatWest and Santander | July 28, 2025[9] |
| Stablecoins on the network | About 130 crypto co-brand card programs and stablecoins embedded into Mastercard Move in 2025; payouts to stablecoin wallets with Thunes | 2025[1][18] |
| BVNK | Definitive agreement to acquire the stablecoin infrastructure firm for up to $1.8 billion, including $300 million in contingent payments (March 17, 2026); completed August 3, 2026 | 2026[7][8] |
| Global Money Platform | Fiat and stablecoin accounts and payouts behind a single API with BVNK, integrating Mastercard Move; coverage expected to expand to more than 40 currencies across 200-plus countries and territories in 2027 | October 15, 2026[19] |
How does Mastercard frame the shift, where does AI come in, and what is not disclosed?
The 10-K frames the opportunity as "capturing the significant secular opportunity of cash displacement" while adding rails beyond cards. At its November 13, 2024 investment community meeting Mastercard set 2025–2027 objectives of net revenue growth at the high end of low double digits, an operating margin of at least 55%, and high-teens net revenue growth for value-added services and solutions.[1][20]
AI is the security layer on the faster rails. Mastercard says its AI scam scoring, Consumer Fraud Risk, is used by 15 banks representing 90% of UK account-to-account payments and played a key role in a 20% fall in APP fraud cases in 2024; on card rails, AI-powered decisioning detected 40% more payments fraud in Q1 2025 than a year earlier, per PYMNTS' report of the call. The AI products are on the companion page.[9][12]
Inclusion targets were met on Mastercard's own count: it says it connected 1.06 billion people to the digital economy since 2015 and 90 million micro, small and medium enterprises since 2020, surpassing a goal of 50 million by 2025.[21]
What is not disclosed: the countries where Mastercard runs real-time payments infrastructure, open banking and Pay by Bank volumes, stablecoin volumes on the network, and Global Money Platform customers. The tokenization and contactless shares are Mastercard's own figures on different bases (all transactions, switched transactions, in-person or e-commerce), so they are not one series.[1][16][19][12]
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 19, 2026; the profile holds the full record of 16 dated moves, 9 use cases and 23 sources.
| Use case | What the record shows | Status | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mastercard Agent Pay | Agentic Tokens and agent registration let verified AI agents pay within consumer-set limits; enabled for all European issuers and used in controlled live transactions, with B2B agentic transactions live in Asia Pacific markets. | Rolling out | [22][23][24][25] |
| Agent Pay for Machines | Credentialing, programmatic spending limits and guaranteed multi-rail settlement for high-frequency, low-value payments between agents and services. | Announced | [26] |
| Date | Move | Detail | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sep 28, 2026 | Advanced B2B Analytics for supplier payments | Mastercard launched Advanced B2B Analytics, a card-acceptance analytics platform that uses dynamic acceptance propensity scoring built on an AI-powered infrastructure to show issuers and corporate clients which suppliers are likeliest to accept card payments; Absa Group and Emirates NBD are among the first issuers to offer it. Mastercard points to an approximately $80 trillion addressable B2B payments opportunity, and Marc Pettican, global head of Corporate Solutions, said businesses "are sitting on vast amounts of payment data, but too often it remains fragmented and underutilized." | [27] |
| Jul 30, 2026 | Q2 results cite agentic payments | Mastercard reports Q2 2026 net revenue of $9.3 billion, up 14%; CEO Michael Miebach points to its 'market-first Agentic Payment capability'. | [3] |
| Jun 10, 2026 | Agent Pay for Machines launched | A service for permissioned, orchestrated and settled machine-to-machine payments, some fractions of a cent, across cards, accounts and stablecoins, with more than 30 initial participants including Adyen, Coinbase, Stripe and Cloudflare. | [26] |
| Jun 2, 2026 | All European issuers enabled for Agent Pay | Mastercard says all its issuers in Europe are enabled at network level for Agent Pay and that banks across Europe have completed controlled, live agentic transactions using passkeys. | [24] |
| Mar 2, 2026 | Europe's first live end-to-end agent payment with Santander | Banco Santander completes a payment executed by an AI agent through its live payments infrastructure using Mastercard Agent Pay, in a controlled environment; the companies say it does not constitute a commercial rollout. | [28] |
How much volume does Mastercard process?
Mastercard's network carried $10.6 trillion of gross dollar volume and 175.5 billion switched transactions in 2025, up 9% on a local currency basis and 10%, per its FY2025 10-K; in 2024 the figures were $9.8 trillion and 159.4 billion. In the second quarter of 2026 GDV was $2.9 trillion, up 8%, and cross-border volume grew 12%.
What share of Mastercard transactions are tokenized?
About 40% of all Mastercard transactions in 2025, per the FY2025 10-K, up from about 30% in 2024. In Europe, where Mastercard set a goal of 100% e-commerce tokenization by 2030, three in five e-commerce transactions were tokenised by June 2026. Mastercard says tokenization has raised approval rates by up to 6% where it is live in Asia Pacific.
Does Mastercard run real-time payment systems?
Yes. Its Vocalink subsidiary runs the UK's Faster Payments, Bacs and Image Clearing systems for Pay.UK, processing more than £37 billion of payments a day, and the Bank of England designates it a specified service provider. The FY2025 10-K says Mastercard operates real-time payments infrastructure in several countries but does not list them.
What is Mastercard doing with stablecoins?
In 2025 it had about 130 crypto co-brand card programs and embedded stablecoins in Mastercard Move. It agreed on March 17, 2026 to buy stablecoin infrastructure firm BVNK for up to $1.8 billion, completed the deal on August 3, 2026, and on October 15, 2026 launched the Global Money Platform with BVNK for fiat and stablecoin accounts and payouts.
How much of Mastercard's network is contactless?
Mastercard says contactless payments accounted for more than 75% of its transactions in 2025. Its FY2024 10-K put contactless at approximately 70% of in-person purchase transactions in 2024, and in Q1 2025 it said 73% of in-person switched transactions were contactless. The measures use different bases.
- Mastercard Incorporated Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2025
- Mastercard Incorporated Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2024
- Mastercard Incorporated Second-Quarter 2026 Financial Results (Form 8-K, Exhibit 99.1)
- Can't touch this: Everything that went contactless in 2025
- Mastercard reimagines online checkout; commits to reaching 100% e-commerce tokenization by 2030 in Europe
- Pay.UK and Vocalink extend contracts securing continuity for UK payments systems (undated page, retrieved 2026-10-19)
- Mastercard to acquire BVNK to connect on-chain payments and fiat rails
- Mastercard completes acquisition of BVNK to advance global stablecoin capabilities
- Prevent, Protect and Recover: Mastercard strengthens trust in Account-to-Account payments
- Mastercard Incorporated First-Quarter 2026 Financial Results (Form 8-K, Exhibit 99.1)
- Earnings Review: Operating and delivering with confidence (Q1 2026)
- Mastercard Move Transactions Grow 35%, CEO Says Consumer Spending 'Solid'
- One year in, Mastercard's checkout transformation gains ground across Europe
- Mastercard Advances Europe's Checkout Transformation on the Road to 2030
- Mastercard Champions Password-Free, Number-Free Checkout Across Asia Pacific by 2030
- Deutsche Bank and Mastercard partner to power merchant solutions with open banking payments
- Bank of England fines Vocalink more than $16 million for compliance failure
- Mastercard and Thunes bring stablecoin payouts to the mainstream
- Mastercard and BVNK launch Global Money Platform to power a multi-money world
- Mastercard Incorporated Form 8-K: 2025-2027 performance objectives (Investment Community Meeting)
- Beyond one billion: Inside the journey to a more inclusive and sustainable economy (2025 Impact Report)
- Mastercard unveils Agent Pay, pioneering agentic payments technology to power commerce in the age of AI
- Making agentic AI commerce a reality with embedded, trusted payments
- Europe is Building the Foundations for Trusted Agentic Commerce
- Ushering in the intelligence layer
- Mastercard launches Agent Pay for Machines to unlock super-fast, always-on payments
- Mastercard launches AI-powered B2B analytics for supplier payments
- Santander and Mastercard complete Europe's first live end-to-end payment executed by an AI agent
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