Visa, Mastercard, and Ant International announced they're building common standards for AI-agent payments. Verify the transactions. Monitor them. Make sure the robots don't go rogue with your Discover card.
The press release doesn't explain which AI agents need to make payments or why. Your ChatGPT subscription runs on a normal credit card. Your Midjourney account charges you like a human signed up for it. But sure, let's build infrastructure for a use case that doesn't exist yet.
The partnership focuses on verification and monitoring. Translation: they want to own the rails before anyone figures out what the train is carrying. Classic move. Build the tollbooth before the road gets paved. Charge rent on property that might become valuable if seventeen things go right and venture capital doesn't evaporate first.
Ant International gets a seat at this table despite being banned from half the global financial system three years ago. Mastercard and Visa apparently decided that's water under the bridge. Nothing says "trusted payment standards" like partnering with a company Beijing spanked so hard it canceled an IPO mid-flight.
The retail trader reading this thinks it's bullish for fintech. He's already Googling "AI payments penny stocks" and refreshing his Robinhood app. He'll find some company that mentioned artificial intelligence once in an earnings call and go all-in on margin. Then he'll blame Jerome Powell when it craters.
The actual headline here is that three massive corporations held meetings, agreed to more meetings, and issued a press release about agreeing to hold meetings. No product. No timeline. No specifics beyond "we're working on standards." Standards for a thing that might never need to exist in the form they're imagining.
But congratulations to everyone involved on solving tomorrow's hypothetical problem while yesterday's actual fraud still clears in three business days.
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