Agentic payments explained: What Singapore merchants need to know (2026 guide)

Key Takeaways:

• When an AI agent makes a purchase, the consumer has already authorised the spend: the agent never touches a raw card number.

• For merchants, agent-initiated transactions process as card-not-present through your existing payment infrastructure. No new rails required.

• Airwallex's Commerce Suite and payment acquiring infrastructure are built to handle agent-initiated transactions natively in Singapore. You can start accepting agentic payments today with Airwallex Payments.

Agentic payments are transactions completed by AI agents on behalf of consumers: there’s no human at the checkout, no finger on the "pay now" button. The agent browses, selects, and pays. Your payment infrastructure receives the transaction.

This is already happening in Singapore. Mastercard completed a live agentic transaction with DBS and UOB, while Visa is running a pilot with DBS in food and beverage. The volume is small today, but the direction is clear.

For most merchants, the immediate question is an operational one. How does the payment actually arrive? Who authorised it? And does your current setup handle it? That's what this article covers.

How agentic payments work

When an AI agent completes a purchase, the transaction follows a path that's different from anything your checkout was originally designed for. Here's how it works.

The consumer authorises it before the agent acts

Before the agent reaches your checkout, the consumer has already set a spend mandate inside their agent environment — for example, an AI assistant or a shopping agent embedded in a browser or app.

That mandate defines exactly what the agent is allowed to do: which merchants it can buy from, in which currency, up to what amount, and for how long. The consumer is in control. They just exercised that control earlier in the process, not at the moment of purchase.

Your checkout receives a token, not a card number

When the agent checks out on your site, it doesn't present a raw card number. It presents a scoped payment token, which can be configured with restrictions such as merchant, currency, spend limits, and expiry windows.

The consumer's actual card details never leave the wallet environment that issued the token. For your system, receiving a token rather than a card number is already standard practice: it's the same principle as Apple Pay or Google Pay.

Your existing infrastructure processes it

The token arrives at your payment service provider as a card-not-present transaction. Fraud screening, acquiring, and settlement generally follow existing card-not-present processes.

What about authorisation? Who's responsible?

If no human pressed "buy," who bears liability if something goes wrong?

The answer is that liability depends on how the transaction was authorised and how that authorisation is recorded.

In agent-driven commerce, the consumer typically delegates spending authority to an AI agent before any transaction takes place. That delegation is captured in the wallet or agent environment, creating an auditable record of what the consumer permitted, when it was permitted, and any conditions attached to it.

To make these authorisations verifiable across payment systems, industry frameworks are emerging to standardise how consent is recorded and validated. Examples include:

• Mastercard Verifiable Intent — developed with Google, this creates tamper-resistant authorisation records for agent-initiated transactions.

• Visa Agentic Ready — validates that agent-initiated transactions carry verified consumer consent before they reach a merchant.

From a liability standpoint, agent transactions are treated as card-not-present. Agent transactions are generally expected to follow existing card-not-present dispute and chargeback frameworks.

MAS Technology Risk Management Guidelines emphasise appropriate controls and authorisation mechanisms, which are relevant considerations as agentic commerce develops.

The bigger operational question is about detection. Knowing which transactions are agent-initiated helps you monitor patterns, manage fraud models, and prepare for the volume that's coming.

Agentic payment protocols: ACP, UCP, Mastercard Agent Pay, and Visa IC

If you've been in any vendor conversation about agentic commerce recently, you've probably heard a few acronyms thrown around: ACP, UCP, Agent Pay. Think of these protocols as the agreed-upon languages that allow AI agents, wallets, and merchant checkouts to communicate.

They define how a token gets issued, passed, and validated. You don't need to implement all of them, but you do need to know which ones your payment infrastructure supports.

The two that matter most right now for SG merchants are Mastercard Agent Pay and Visa Intelligent Commerce: both have live or active pilots with local banks. ACP and UCP are worth tracking, particularly if your checkout is built on Stripe or Shopify, where support is already built in.

You don't need to pick one. These protocols are designed to coexist, and most payment infrastructure providers will handle compatibility on your behalf.

Airwallex's Agentic Commerce Suite supports major agentic commerce protocols, including ACP and UCP, with payment rails built on the latest Visa and Mastercard standards. Learn more about Airwallex Payments or sign up to start using it.

Does your current payment setup need to change?

For most Singapore merchants, the honest answer is: not much, and not immediately.

Agent-initiated transactions arrive as card-not-present. If your checkout already handles online payments — tokenized cards, digital wallets, 3DS — your acquiring infrastructure will process agent transactions without modification.

Settlement works the same way. For real-time settlement, FAST and PayNow can support domestic account-to-account transfers, although agent-initiated card transactions continue to settle through existing card acquiring processes.

That said, there are a few things worth reviewing:

• Checkout flow assumptions — many checkout flows are built around human behaviour: session timeouts, CAPTCHA, and interaction prompts that expect a person to respond. Agents can't do that. If your checkout relies heavily on these, agent transactions may drop off before completing.

• Analytics and tagging — agent-initiated traffic will look different in your data. Without tagging it separately, it'll blend into your CNP volume and distort your fraud models and conversion metrics over time.

• Protocol compatibility — if you want your products to be discoverable and purchasable by specific agent ecosystems (Google's AI Mode shopping, for example), you may need to ensure your checkout supports the relevant protocol. Your payment provider should be able to tell you where you stand.

None of these require a full re-platforming. They're configuration and integration questions, which your payment or engineering team should be able to assess in a conversation with your provider.

Why Singapore merchants use Airwallex for agentic payments

Airwallex was designed to handle the complexity that comes with agentic payments: multiple currencies, cross-border acquiring, and the programmatic transaction volumes that agentic commerce will generate.

Here are three practical advantages that you get with Airwallex:

Native Singapore acquiring

Airwallex holds a Major Payment Institution licence from MAS and processes transactions locally. That means SGD collections, FAST and PayNow settlement, and local acquiring. without routing payments through overseas infrastructure and absorbing the cost and latency that comes with it.

Airi: A checkout built for frictionless payments

Airi is Airwallex's one-click checkout network that lets customers save their payment details once and check out in a single click wherever Airi is accepted. Compared to standard card checkout flows, Airi delivers a 3x faster checkout, increasing conversion by up to 14%.¹

Airwallex is also developing Airi into an agentic wallet that will allow shoppers to authorise AI agents to transact on their behalf without exposing sensitive payment data, alongside tools that help merchants accept and manage agent-initiated payments.

Multi-currency infrastructure as a baseline

Agent commerce won't stay domestic. As AI shopping agents expand their scope, Singapore merchants will increasingly receive agent-initiated transactions from buyers across ASEAN and beyond. Airwallex supports collection and settlement across 60+ currencies natively, helping merchants avoid unnecessary currency conversions on some cross-border transactions.

Frequently asked questions (FAQs)

What are agentic payments?

Agentic payments are transactions completed by an AI agent on behalf of a consumer, without the consumer manually approving each purchase. The consumer sets spend parameters upfront (which merchants the agent can buy from, how much it can spend, and in which currency) and the agent operates within those boundaries. The payment itself processes through standard card infrastructure, the same way any online transaction does.

Are agentic payments already happening in Singapore?

Yes. Mastercard ran its first live authenticated agentic transaction in Singapore in March 2026, completed with DBS and UOB, in which an agent booked a ride to Changi Airport.² Visa is running a separate pilot with DBS in food and beverage. HSBC also completed a B2B agentic commerce pilot in Singapore in May 2026, connecting a corporate buyer, a procurement platform, and an eCommerce supplier through Mastercard Agent Pay.³

Do I need to change my payment setup to accept agentic payments?

For most merchants, not immediately. Agent-initiated transactions arrive as card-not-present and process through your existing acquiring infrastructure. The areas worth reviewing are checkout flows that rely on human interaction to complete — session timeouts, CAPTCHA, and similar prompts — and analytics tagging, so you can identify agent-initiated traffic separately in your data.

Who is liable if an AI agent makes an incorrect or fraudulent purchase?

Agent-initiated transactions are treated as card-not-present, so existing chargeback and dispute rules apply. The authorisation record, created when the consumer set their spend mandate, serves as evidence of consent. Mastercard's Verifiable Intent framework and Visa's Agentic Ready programme both create verifiable records of what the consumer authorised, which merchants and issuers can rely on in a dispute.

What is the difference between agentic payments and regular automated payments?

Regular automated payments follow fixed rules, such as: pay this vendor this amount on this date. Agentic payments involve an AI agent making contextual decisions: evaluating options, choosing a merchant, and completing a transaction based on a consumer's preferences and constraints. The agent exercises judgement; traditional automation does not.

Sources:

1. https://www.airwallex.com/en-sg/payments/airi

2. https://www.mastercard.com/news/ap/en/newsroom/press-releases/en/2026/mastercard-delivers-its-first-live-agentic-transaction-in-singapore-with-dbs-and-uob/

3. https://www.about.hsbc.com.sg/news-and-media/hsbc-expands-b2b-payments-capabilities-in-singapore

This publication does not constitute legal, tax, or professional advice from Airwallex, nor does it substitute seeking such advice, and makes no express or implied representations / warranties / guarantees regarding content accuracy, completeness, or currency. If you would like to request an update, feel free to contact us at [[email protected]]. Airwallex (Singapore) Pte. Ltd. (201626561Z) is licensed as a Major Payment Institution and regulated by the Monetary Authority of Singapore.