Sunrate, the global payment and treasury management platform, and Mastercard, a global technology company in the payments industry, unveiled a joint white paper, Beyond Automation: Defining Agentic Global Payments, at the 2026 World Artificial Intelligence Conference (WAIC).

Among the first reports in the payments industry to examine the impact of Agentic AI on B2B cross-border payments, the white paper provides a comprehensive framework for understanding how AI agents are reshaping enterprise payment operations. It proposes that cross-border payments are evolving beyond digitisation and automation into a new stage: Autonomy—where AI agents with reasoning, planning, and execution capabilities can independently orchestrate and optimise end-to-end payment and treasury workflows within defined governance frameworks.

As businesses expand across borders, B2B cross-border payments continue to be constrained by fragmented workflows, disconnected systems, foreign exchange inefficiencies, rising compliance requirements, and complex reconciliation processes. While traditional automation improves individual tasks, the white paper demonstrates that Agentic AI represents a fundamental shift by enabling intelligent agents to coordinate entire payment journeys across systems, counterparties, and approval workflows.

Drawing on Sunrate's global payment infrastructure and AI-native product capabilities, together with Mastercard's expertise in secure payment networks and data intelligence, the white paper defines Agentic Global Payments — a new category of AI-native global payment infrastructure built to automate and manage complex enterprise workflows.

The report identifies 16 major pain points across the B2B payment lifecycle and outlines 13 high-value AI use cases spanning supplier onboarding, accounts payable and receivable, virtual commercial cards, payment routing, foreign exchange management, compliance screening, fraud detection, reconciliation, and conversational operational support. It also demonstrates how AI agents can automate complex workflows—from extracting information across multiple document formats and conducting compliance checks to initiating payments, optimising FX execution, and completing reconciliation—while operating within enterprise governance and control frameworks.

The white paper further highlights that trusted adoption of agentic payments depends on more than technological capability. It identifies governance, transparency, security, and ecosystem collaboration as essential foundations for enterprise deployment, supported by frameworks such as Know Your Agent (KYA), payment tokenisation, auditability, and cross-industry interoperability.

Sunrate.AI portfolio currently includes the Payment Agent, FX Agent, Compliance Agent, Onboarding Agent, and Chat Agent,designed to help enterprises automate and optimise critical payment and treasury processes while maintaining compliance and operational control.

Mastercard has also been actively building the foundations for trusted agentic commerce – combining AI capabilities with verifiable authorisation, clear accountability and proven payments security. Its work in this area, including Agent Pay (alongside Agent Pay for Machines) and Verifiable Intent, are proof points in how Mastercard is enabling AI to participate in commerce safely and transparently. 

"Our mission is to make global payments seamless, compliant, and intelligent," said Paul Meng, Co-founder and CEO of Sunrate. "As businesses continue expanding internationally, AI agents will fundamentally reshape how enterprises manage global payments—enabling smoother capital flows, reducing operational friction, and embedding real-time intelligence into every payment decision. This white paper represents an important step in helping the industry understand how Agentic AI can be deployed responsibly at enterprise scale."

"Agentic commerce is changing how businesses make and execute payment decisions, but speed without accountability creates new categories of risk," said Anouska Ladds, Executive Vice President, Commercial & New Payment Flows, Asia Pacific, Mastercard. "As AI starts to act on behalf of businesses, autonomous payment decisions need a clear, auditable chain of identity, intent and action. That's what allows organisations to delegate with genuine confidence — and what will determine whether agentic commerce scales past pilots."

Released under WAIC 2026's theme, "Intelligent Partners, Co-creating the Future," the white paper provides business leaders with practical guidance on adopting AI-driven payment capabilities, covering implementation approaches, governance considerations, and real-world enterprise applications.

By combining Sunrate's expertise in global payments and treasury management with Mastercard's trusted payment infrastructure and network capabilities, the collaboration reflects a shared commitment to accelerating the next generation of intelligent, secure, and autonomous B2B global payments.