Mastercard & Google just open-sourced the missing trust layer for AI that spends money 🤖💳; Nasdaq’s tokenization play isn’t about 24/7 trading. It’s about who issues the token 📈🪙
FinTech is Eating the World, 11 March
Hey Everyone,
Good morning & happy Wednesday! Today’s issue is super hot as we’re looking into Mastercard and Google, which just open-sourced the missing trust layer for AI that spends your money (what Verifiable Intent is all about, why it matters and how it will change Agentic Commerce & Agentic Payments + bonus deep dives into Mastercard & Visa’s latest financials, and how Google’s building the Android of Commerce), and Nasdaq’s tokenization play (why it’s not about 24/7 trading at all, where the real value unlock is & what to expect next). So let’s just jump straight into the finnovative stuff 🌶️
Mastercard and Google just open-sourced the missing trust layer for AI that spends money 🤖💳
Following the machine economy 🤖 Only ~16% of U.S. consumers trust AI to make payments on their behalf. Mastercard MA 0.00%↑ and Google GOOGL 0.00%↑ just shipped the spec designed to change that.
Last week, Mastercard quietly released Verifiable Intent, an open-source framework that creates cryptographic proof an AI agent is doing exactly what its human authorized - nothing more, nothing less.
Think of it as a digitally signed power of attorney with machine-enforceable constraints: amount caps, merchant allowlists, budget periods, and product categories.
The agent can act autonomously, but the boundaries are tamper-evident and auditable. It’s built on SD-JWTs aligned with W3C Verifiable Credentials and works across Google’s Agent Payments Protocol, Universal Commerce Protocol, and anything else that wants to plug in.
Let’s break this down, and most importantly - understand why it could change the game of agentic payments.
