GoKawiil
Tech News
Circle has unveiled Arc, a new blockchain network designed for institutional finance, with USDC stablecoin functioning as its core settlement asset. The network is permissioned, meaning access is restricted, and is backed by major financial players including BlackRock, Visa, and Mastercard.
Mastercard has launched a program that issues virtual payment cards specifically to AI agents so they can complete purchases on behalf of consumers. The initiative pushes 'agentic commerce'—where software autonomously browses, selects and buys items—further into the mainstream payments ecosystem.
Mastercard has signed a new deal aimed at letting AI-driven shopping agents complete purchases using customer payment credentials. The move comes as rivals Visa and American Express are also preparing their own systems to support autonomous, AI-powered shopping bots.
Mastercard's newly appointed marketing chief is reworking the company's longtime 'Priceless' branding into a global campaign centered on small businesses. The initiative comes as small firms grapple with rising energy costs tied to Middle East conflict, tariff-driven supply chain disruptions, and increasing labor expenses.
An explainer breaks down what Visa and Mastercard actually do, noting they are card networks rather than banks, card issuers, payment processors, or merchant acquirers. The piece maps out the two-sided market linking cardholders and issuers on one side with merchants and acquirers on the other, with the network connecting both.
Anthropic has launched a developer blueprint that provides pre-built harnesses, patterns and guardrails for creating AI shopping and merchant agents using Claude. The kit includes reference implementations for retail, travel, telecom and ticketing use cases, plus a Claude Code plugin, and deploys across Claude API, Amazon Bedrock, Microsoft Foundry and Google Cloud Vertex AI. Partners such as Accenture, Mastercard and Visa are collaborating to help merchants adopt the framework ahead of the holiday shopping season.