Mastercard’s new Signals report, titled “Encoding Trust: The Race for Intent, Consent and Control in an AI-Powered World,” examines the emerging era of commerce in which AI assistants go beyond conducting research and offering recommendations on behalf of consumers and businesses, moving instead into making decisions and executing transactions.
According to the report, the main barrier to the growth of AI-assisted commerce is no longer technological capability, but rather users’ trust in delegating decision-making and payment authority to these systems. As a result, the widespread adoption of AI-assisted commerce will depend on a trust architecture in which the identity of AI assistants can be verified, user intent is clearly recorded, granted authority can be limited, and can be revoked when necessary.
Consumers open to assistance, cautious about full autonomy
The share of respondents who say they would allow AI to select a product to purchase based on their preferences and budget, provided the payment is approved by the consumer, reaches 32 percent. However, the share of those ready to grant AI full autonomous authority to complete a purchase, even when predetermined rules are in place, remains at just 9 percent.
A $5 trillion global potential by 2030
Although AI-assisted commerce is still in the early stages of its development, it carries significant economic potential. According to the report, global consumer spending supported by AI assistants is expected to reach 3 to 5 trillion dollars by 2030. In business-to-business transactions, this figure is projected to be up to three times larger.
By contrast, transactions carried out through AI assistants currently account for only 0.4 percent of global e-commerce volume and 0.2 percent of transaction value. According to the report, this gap between market potential and current usage shows the need to build strong infrastructures in the areas of trust, identity verification, authorization, merchant acceptance and transaction security.
Trust will be established before the moment of payment
This shift requires the creation of a new “trust layer” between user intent and the execution of payment. This layer can verify, before money moves, who is carrying out the transaction, which actions the user has authorized, and which limits apply, such as spending limit, time window, product category or merchant. Recording the AI assistant’s activities also provides an auditable transaction history in the event of potential disputes. Technology platforms, meanwhile, need to be able to verify the AI assistant’s identity and user consent, and offer consumers the ability to modify or revoke the authority they have granted. Developing shared and clearly understood rules among all parties in the ecosystem regarding liability, disputes and resolution is among the fundamental conditions for building trust in AI-assisted commerce.
Mastercard is developing secure authorization infrastructure
Mastercard is adapting its identity verification, cybersecurity, tokenization, payment security and global network capabilities to the needs of AI-assisted commerce. Mastercard Agent Pay, along with dedicated tokens for AI assistants, Verifiable Intent and assistant identity solutions, aims to ensure that authority granted by users can be defined, verified and enforced throughout the transaction.
Mastercard Chief AI and Data Officer Greg Ulrich commented on the matter:
“AI-assisted commerce only works when three elements scale together: the payments that enable transactions, the trust and security that safeguard them, and the AI-powered services that make them smarter and more personal. Mastercard is accelerating its work across all three areas, drawing on its network to turn emerging capabilities into real-world applications.”
The report concludes that the future of AI-assisted commerce will not be determined solely by how autonomously AI assistants can act. The success of this new era will depend on clear authorization models that users can understand, secure and interoperable infrastructures, visible control mechanisms, and effective dispute resolution processes.
To access the full Mastercard Signals report: https://view.ceros.com/mastercard-labs/encoding-trust/p/1
