Agentic Waves: Mastercard Splashes out with lobster.cash

Mastercard is sailing ahead as a leader in agentic payments as it announces a partnership with Crossmint’s AI agent payment solution lobster.cash.

The integration will reinforce Mastercard’s reputation for secure transactions as it employs the use of existing Mastercard cards, combining them with standards-based proof of authorisation. 

Cardholders using OpenClaw will be able to authorise AI agents to fulfill agentic commerce wishes, cryptographically linking the user’s explicit intent to Mastercard’s network-backed payments infrastructure. 

Initially available through OpenClaw, lobster.cash agents will be expanded to other agentic platforms outside of agentic credential layer Basis Theory. 

A deep dive into lobster.cash

The integration will be available through an early access programme, with wider access available through the OpenClaw ecosystem and other agentic platforms. A waitlist is available.

By integrating with lobster.cash, Mastercard’s Agent Pay is extended past major financial institutions – such as Santander, UOB and Commonwealth Bank of Australia – into developer-led ecosystems. 

Lobster.cash is owned by Crossmint and powered by Basis Theory, Solana, Circle, Visa, Mastercard and Stych.

The company provides payment infrastructure to AI agents with over 1 million agents deployed across 20 messaging platforms. Some platforms supported by lobster.cash include OpenClaw, Claude Code and Hermes. 

By providing a payment standard that hands programmatic control over to the consumer, lobster.cash enables a more accessible and secure mechanism that dictates exactly how agent payments can spend, where and with how much. 

Alfonso Gómez-Jordana Mañas, Co-Founder of Crossmint, comments: “Mastercard Agent Pay is one of the most trusted payment infrastructures designed for agentic commerce in the world. Bringing it to lobster.cash means agent users don't need a new wallet or a new card.

“They can put the card they already have to work for their agent, with the security and control they expect from Mastercard. This is how agentic payments reach everyone.”

What are agent standards? 

The partnership makes use of Mastercard’s Verifiable Intent framework that addresses the needs of agentic commerce. 

Without a human, how can we hold AI agents accountable? 

Agent protocols exist to ensure a more robust guardrail for consumer spending. By introducing limits and existing on an unalterable blockchain, users can have more peace of mind in trusting an agent with their money. 

The Verifiable Intent framework was co-developed with security giant Google, aligning with the Agent Payments Protocol and Universal Commerce Protocol. 

Each transaction is therefore able to be independently verified by issuers, merchants and platforms to ensure that the transaction has been carried out to the specific user requirements. 

The protocol-agnostic Verifiable Intent framework serves as a “shared source of truth across open agent ecosystems” according to Mastercard. 

“Mastercard Agent Pay was built to bring trust and accountability to every agentic transaction,” notes Pablo Fourez, Chief Digital Officer at Mastercard.

“By integrating with lobster.cash, we’re extending Mastercard’s trusted payments network and infrastructure to open agent platforms, enabling developers to innovate while ensuring consumers and issuers retain the same security and control they expect from Mastercard.”