Europe ushers in machine customer era as AI agents buy coffee and concert tickets

AI agents in Finland and the Netherlands have purchased a coffee taster set and tickets to the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra. 

The Dutch transaction – announced on 2 June – marked a first for Europe and saw ING collaborate with Worldline and Mastercard to deliver a secure and complete purchase. In this case, the customer briefed its AI assistant on the preferred experience, date, and budget. The assistant found and suggested options, and the customer made the final selection, before approving the purchase.

The purchase was facilitated by Mastercard's Agent Pay protocol and charged to a card issued by ING. 

"For ING, this collaboration is the perfect opportunity to keep building our role as a trusted partner in an increasingly agentic future in banking," said Hans Overeem, head of Payments at ING in the Netherlands. "We look forward to making agentic commerce a great experience for all our customers, both private and business," added Hans.

Days later in Finland, an AI agent purchased a coffee taster set, completing the first live agentic transaction in the country. 

This agent also used the Mastercard Agent Pay protocol, with the payment successfully charged to a Mastercard credit card issued by Finnish bank, Nordea, which announced the milestone on 6 June.

Based on instructions from a human customer, this AI agent handled the end-to-end purchase and payment. As with the ING purchase, under the Agent Pay protocol, the transaction used agentic tokens, ensuring protection of sensitive data and strong consumer verification throughout the process. 

Nordea's head of transaction banking, Kirsi Wiitala, said: "Agentic commerce represents an important evolution in how customers will interact with digital services. As transactions become more autonomous, strong safeguards, customer authorization, transparency and trust are essential."

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AI agent firsts 

While the coffee and ticket purchases in Europe mark a watershed moment for the continent, they're not the first autonomous transactions in the world. 

Mastercard said in an earnings call in October 2025 that U.S. Bank and Citibank cardholders could now use Agent Pay, with other US Mastercard issuers enjoying Agent Pay from November, and a global roll-out following in early 2026. 

In November 2025, Fetch.ai announced the world's first AI agent-to-agent payment. In this case, a personal AI powered by ASI:One – Fetch.ai's proprietary agentic AI platform – coordinated with another personal AI to identify a shared dinner plan for their humans, secure a reservation via OpenTable, and complete payment, entirely while both human users were offline.

It marked the first time autonomous AI coordinated plans, then executed real-world transactions on behalf of humans.

Also in late 2025, Mastercard debuted Agent Pay in the UAE in collaboration with lifestyle group Majid Al Futtaim and fintech Dataiera to facilitate a purchase of VOX Cinema tickets. It marked the first transaction in the Middle East and the first outside the US.

Ahmed Galal Ismail, CEO of Majid Al Futtaim Holding, said: "Collaborating with Mastercard on Agent Pay allows us to explore how intelligence and integrity can coexist in digital transactions – creating systems that prioritize trust, transparency, and consumer confidence. This collaboration is not just about convenience; it's about setting a framework for responsible innovation that redefines how people shop, pay, and engage in a connected world."

In early 2026, a series of AI agent firsts occurred across Asia.

In South Korea, Mastercard Agent Pay was used to securely pay for a car service from Incheon International Airport to Seoul, marking the country's first agentic transaction. In Singapore, an AI agent completed a purchase on the global mobility platform, hoppa. Similar transactions have now been completed in Hong Kong and Thailand, and Visa's Visa Intelligent Commerce is also being used for real-world use cases. 

What is Agent Pay? 

Mastercard's agent pay was first introduced in 2025. Because AI agents are not legally recognized as people, they cannot "purchase" goods and services autonomously. The Agent Pay protocol recognizes AI agents as having the authority to make purchases and enables them to securely initiate and complete transactions using Mastercard's network tokenization, authentication, and fraud and cybersecurity technology. 

Instead of using the human's credit card, Agent Pay allows the agent to trade in agentic tokens, with a unique encrypted token for each transaction. It's the same tokenization stack that powers contactless and card-on-file payments, tailored to the agentic economy. 

As payment infrastructure, Agent Pay underpins the integration of trusted, seamless payment experiences in the tailored recommendations and insights already provided on conversational platforms, such as Instant Checkout. Mastercard also offers an Agent Toolkit to help AI assistants and agentic tools access and interpret Mastercard's API documentation. 

Erik Gutwasser, division president for Northern Europe at Mastercard, said: "AI has the potential to simplify how people manage everyday tasks, but trust and security must come first. Agent Pay is designed to ensure AI-initiated transactions are transparent, authenticated and always under the consumer's control. 

"Enhanced transaction data also gives issuers clear visibility into agent-initiated activity. By working with partners like Nordea, we are helping lay the foundations for trusted, AI-powered commerce," Gutwasser added.

Agent Pay isn't the only such technology. Visa and Amex also have their own payment infrastructure, allowing their human customers to utilize the full buying capabilities of AI agents. 

Within hours of Mastercard unveiling Agent Pay in April 2025, Visa unveiled Visa Intelligent Commerce, which includes AI-Ready Cards: replacing card details with tokenized credential confirming a specific agent has been authorized to transact for a set period of time.

Why are AI assistants buying coffee and taxi rides?

Facilitated by LLMs such as ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude, tech-savvy customers can now instruct their AI assistants to shortlist and recommend products and services based on specific criteria.

It's called agentic commerce and the trend is fast taking hold, with brands racing to ensure their digital real estate is machine readable and able to surface in AI search results.

Traffic from LLMs to ecommerce sites has climbed sharply in recent years, as consumers utilize their new, personal shopping assistants. 

As these AI assistants act with increasing autonomy, they will become machine customers, AKA algorithmic buyers. 

Quick links

• Google launches suite of agentic commerce tools for customers and retailers
• AI could drive 37% of customer interactions by end of 2026
• The human-machine translator: CX's most important new role

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