“Agentic commerce is the next evolution in payments, a significant opportunity for Mastercard,” said Mastercard chief executive Michael Miebach early Thursday. More important for networks like Mastercard, “we expect cards will prevail in an agentic world,” he told equity analysts during a review of his company’s June-quarter results. In agentic commerce, bits of code called AI agents shop and pay on the Internet on behalf of consumers. Mastercard, like its rival Visa, has been active in digital currencies for several years, and now, Miebach said, the network’s crypto volume has tripled over the past two years. The network reported 739 million cards (Mastercard and Maestro) in circulation in the U.S., up 4.8%; worldwide, 3.46 billion cards, a 7.2% increase.