Europe’s ‘first’ payment made by AI agent conducted by Santander

Banco Santander and Mastercard have announced the successful completion of Europe’s first live end-to-end payment executed by an AI agent.

The companies said the payment represents the first agentic payment carried out within a regulated banking framework and marks a significant milestone in the use of AI systems capable of initiating and completing transactions on behalf of customers.

Santander carried out the transaction in a controlled environment using Mastercard Agent Pay, with the payment processed through the bank’s live payments infrastructure to validate the end-to-end operational and control framework under real conditions.

Mastercard Agent Pay integrates AI agents into the payment flow as visible, governed participants, enabling seamless interaction between issuers, acquirers and merchants.

The solution enables AI agents to initiate and execute payments on behalf of customers within predefined limits and permissions. In practice, this allows an AI system to securely and transparently complete a purchase using existing payment networks, while maintaining strict standards of security, privacy and consumer protection.

Santander said the transaction confirms its technical and operational readiness to support emerging AI‑driven transaction models.

The bank will now move into extended testing and scaling, exploring additional use cases and partnerships while maintaining strong controls, resilience and regulatory alignment.

“At Santander, we see AI as a transformative force in the evolution of payments. Our role is not only to adopt innovation, but to shape it responsibly, embedding security, governance and customer protection by design,” said Matías Sánchez, global head of cards and digital solutions at Santander. “As AI agents become part of everyday commerce, building trusted, scalable frameworks will be essential to unlocking their full potential.”

Mastercard said its Agent Pay offering applies the same principles that have defined its network for decades – security, trust, interoperability and global scale – to AI‑enabled commerce, integrating agentic systems into payment flows without compromising regulatory or risk standards.