Mastercard has recently deployed authenticated agentic transactions in Singapore and Malaysia, with plans to expand into other ASEAN markets. This rollout is being conducted in partnership with UOB, an ASEAN bank, along with local financial institutions.

The initiative leverages Mastercard Agent Pay, a system that integrates tokenized credentials, Agentic Tokens, and Payment Passkeys for secure AI transactions, ensuring each transaction aligns with consumer authorization and can be audited end-to-end.

In addition, Mastercard has introduced Verifiable Intent, a trust framework co-developed with Google. This tool creates an immutable record of user intent when an AI agent acts on their behalf, providing transparency across all stakeholders involved in the transaction process.

AI Centre of Excellence and Regional Strategy

The company plans to establish its regional AI Centre of Excellence in Singapore by late 2026. This center will integrate Mastercard’s innovation hub, advanced cybersecurity expertise, and AI capabilities into a comprehensive innovation space for the Asia Pacific region.

Mastercard has been applying AI solutions to fraud detection, cybersecurity, and real-time risk management for over a decade. The company employs more than 2,000 professionals globally who focus on data science and artificial intelligence.

The ASEAN rollout is part of Mastercard’s broader network of live agentic transaction deployments which have also been successful in countries such as Australia, New Zealand, India, Malaysia, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Latin America.

Commenting on the initiative, Safdar Khan, Division President for Southeast Asia at Mastercard, highlighted how rapidly the region is adopting secure AI-enabled commerce. Jacquelyn Tan, Head of Group Personal Financial Services at UOB, emphasized that this multi-market collaboration combines innovation with robust governance to facilitate the cross-border and cross-sector scaling of agentic payment capabilities.