Mastercard’s Agent Pay Pilot Distinguishes Signed Vouchers From Final Settlement

The distinction matters because most agent-payment narratives blur authorization with money movement, and Mastercard is drawing that line explicitly by splitting AP2's spending authority from x402's payment requests. For anyone building or auditing autonomous agent commerce, the signed voucher becomes the accountable artifact — the point where intent is logged — while settlement remains a separate, later event. The open question is whether this two-layer design holds up as agent activity scales and disputes arise over what an agent was actually authorized to do.