Banco Santander and Mastercard successfully completed Europe’s first live end-to-end payment executed by an AI agent.
The announcement marks the first agentic payment carried out within a regulated banking framework. It represents a significant milestone in the application of AI systems capable of initiating and completing transactions on behalf of customers.
Santander conducted the transaction in a controlled environment leveraging Mastercard Agent Pay. To validate the end-to-end operational and control framework under real conditions, the transaction was processed directly through Santander’s live payments infrastructure.
Governing the agentic economy
The solution enables AI agents to initiate and execute payments on behalf of customers within strictly predefined limits and permissions. In practical terms, this allows an AI system to securely and transparently complete a purchase using existing payment networks, all while maintaining strict standards of privacy, security, and consumer protection.
To support the transaction, PayOS managed the end-to-end orchestration. Additionally, Mastercard Agent Pay integrates AI agents directly into the payment flow as visible, governed participants, which enables seamless interaction between issuers, acquirers, and merchants.
Industry perspectives
Matías Sánchez, global head of cards and digital solutions at Santander, commented on the bank’s strategic vision: “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. As AI agents become part of everyday commerce, building trusted, scalable frameworks will be essential to unlocking their full potential.”
Kelly Devine, president, Europe at Mastercard, highlighted the broader network implications:
“Agentic payments represent a profound shift in how commerce is initiated and executed. With Mastercard Agent Pay, we are applying the same principles that have defined our network for decades – security, trust, interoperability and global scale – to a new era of AI-enabled commerce. This milestone with Banco Santander demonstrates that innovation and trust can advance together.”
Next steps for AI payments
The successful pilot confirms Santander’s technical and operational readiness to support emerging AI-driven transaction models.
While the pilot was conducted within Santander’s regulated payment framework, it does not constitute a commercial rollout at this stage. The bank stated it will now move into extended testing and scaling, exploring additional use cases and partnerships while maintaining strong controls, resilience, and regulatory alignment.
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