Mastercard processed over €3 trillion in European card transactions in the past year and operates a Dublin technology hub along with a Cyber Resilience Centre in Waterloo, Belgium. The Dublin hub employs nearly 2,000 staff focused on developing next-generation payment solutions, while the Waterloo centre oversees security, governance and long-term investment in the region.

Mastercard partnered with Santander to complete Europe’s first live end-to-end AI agent payment, enabling an autonomous system to conduct a regulated transaction under delegated authority. This milestone establishes AI agents as active economic participants and drives the creation of governance frameworks to manage permissions, accountability and risk for delegated AI transactions.