Mastercard has selected the UK as the launch point for a new agentic AI testing environment that aims to help banks and retailers validate use cases before deploying the technology.

The environment, Proto, is an expansion of its previously announced Agent Suite, a series of tools designed to help businesses incorporate agentic AI into their operations.

Proto will go live in August and is intended to help retailers and their partners, including financial institutions, test whether their products are discoverable by AI agents, how they can scale agentic payment options without losing consumer trust and whether their plans for handling disputes from agentic sales hold up at scale, among other things.

The payment card provider also announced it will introduce three new agents that are designed to support key enterprise functions for the sector and make retail AI-ready: a shopping agent, an onboarding agent and a dispute agent.

Simon Forbes, Mastercard’s division president for the UK and Ireland, said “The UK – with its digitally-savvy consumers, vibrant retail sector, sophisticated payment expertise and world-leading fintech scene – is an important place to test how agentic commerce will work in practice and we look forward to helping turn the UK Government’s ambition on agentic commerce into real benefits for businesses and consumers.”

The company is also set to expand Agent Suite’s offering for small businesses. Its new product, dubbed “Virtual C-Suite”, will offer a number of AI chatbots that Mastercard said will help SMEs access support that can “otherwise feel out of reach”. Its first module, Virtual CFO, is expected to launch in the UK in 2027 as one of the first markets outside of the US.

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