Mastercard expands security tools for AI commerce and African instant payments

Mastercard is expanding its security infrastructure to address emerging risks in digital and AI-driven commerce. The company has introduced a “probability score” for AI-initiated transactions, part of its Agentic Commerce Trust Framework. This system works alongside Skyfire’s identity verification and Cloudflare’s web signals to evaluate whether a specific transaction is legitimate at the moment of execution, moving beyond simple identity verification to dynamic behavioral analysis.

In Africa, Mastercard is targeting the continent’s rapid growth in instant payments, which processed approximately 64 billion transactions worth nearly $2 trillion in 2024. To support this, Mastercard is partnering with the Mojaloop Foundation and AfricaNenda to strengthen fraud prevention. The collaboration aims to integrate Mastercard’s AI-powered A2A Protect solution—which includes real-time risk scoring and mule account intelligence—into existing account-to-account payment infrastructures to enhance consumer confidence and security.