MPE 2026: Mastercard’s Dual Vision – Agentic E-commerce and Stablecoins Drive Payments’ Two Biggest Shifts

At MPE 2026, Brice Van De Walle, Mastercard’s Lead for Core Product in Europe, believes that the payments world is on the cusp of two fundamental shifts, the most exciting of which is Agent e-commerce and explained that this shift will fundamentally change how consumers shop, particularly for Gen Alpha, who are “born into the world of AI”.

Consumers will move from searching and clicking for goods to simply delegating the search and purchase actions to an AI agent and this transformation is set to create dramatic opportunities for merchants, PSPs, and acquirers across the ecosystem.

The main challenge for this new age of commerce is achieving the right balance between high approval rates and low fraud rates. Van De Walle pointed to two core technologies enabling this balance: end-to-end tokenization and advanced authentication. Tokenization replaces sensitive card numbers with dynamic, secure tokens, which are passed from the merchant through to the issuer. This adoption is happening widely; nearly half of all Mastercard e-commerce transactions in Europe are already tokenized, and the company has an ambition to reach 100% tokenized transactions by 2030.

The second key technology, biometric authentication, specifically Passkeys, is also being widely adopted by merchants. By replacing passwords with biometrics, Passkeys provide a best-in-class user experience while driving approval rates higher and keeping fraud rates at the lowest possible level.

Beyond agentic commerce, Van De Walle noted that stablecoins are also gaining relevance, especially in the B2B environment. He highlighted a recent acquisition announcement to enable stablecoin push payments, receiving payments, and wallet enablement. This development will fundamentally shift how banks use these technologies to enable the card rails. Van De Walle concluded that merchants are genuinely interested in developing strategies to embrace agentic e-commerce, and Mastercard is focused on helping partners navigate these exciting changes.

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