With generative AI steadily making systems capable of making decisions and executing tasks sans human intervention, the arrival of the agentic era has further disrupted things. Sensing the arrival of the finance industry’s “New Normal,” American payment industry giant Mastercard has introduced capabilities that will work across the entire commerce lifecycle, from mapping the money flow to forecasting risk and opportunity to recommending and executing next best actions. The “Mastercard Agent Suite” will help its client organisations take actionable steps by integrating agentic AI into their daily operations.
The “Virtual C‑Suite” will provide small business owners with executive-level insight and decision-making by giving them access to each of the C‑suite agents that can help with everything from finance to security to marketing. Small and medium entrepreneurs will get deeper views into their operations, in addition to taking actions to successfully grow and protect their businesses.
The Agent Suite will combine technical support with customisable AI agents, leveraging Mastercard’s extensive payments expertise, data-fuelled insights, proprietary technology platforms and a global network of over 4,000 advisors. Customers will also be able to build, test and deploy fit-for-purpose agents with the tool.
Mastercard’s global advisory team will also support the payment industry giant’s client organisations throughout the process, ensuring businesses evolve with technology in ways that are customisable and configurable, regardless of the prevalent business environment.
Christopher Miller, lead analyst of Emerging Payments at Javelin Strategy & Research, explained that “agents that provide big picture insights alongside unique and local analysis are becoming a critical human augmentation tool. Insights at this level have been available to large enterprises for years, and agentic AI creates the opportunity for smaller organisations to benefit going forward.”
Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) are the engines of the global economy, comprising nearly 90% of businesses and more than half of global employment, and often contributing around half of global GDP in many economies.
Mastercard’s innovation will also come as a breather for these businesses, given the fact that despite facing growing financial and operational complexities, they often lack dedicated subject matter experts to juggle these sensitive areas.
On the other hand, according to eMarketer, one-third of enterprise software applications will incorporate agentic AI by 2028, and Mastercard expects a significant percentage of customer interactions and operational tasks to be supported by AI agents by 2030.
“Small businesses are the cornerstones of communities, but it’s easy for owners to lose sight of the passions that inspired them when they’re buried in spreadsheets and stretched across multiple roles,” said Mark Barnett, global head of Small and Medium Enterprises at Mastercard.