CrediMax, a Bahrain-based electronic payment solutions provider, has partnered with Mastercard to explore agentic commerce capabilities for merchants across the Kingdom, as artificial intelligence increasingly becomes part of how consumers discover, compare and purchase products.
The collaboration will use Mastercard Merchant Cloud, the company’s unified acceptance framework, which provides access to payment processing, agentic commerce, fraud prevention, authentication, tokenisation, data and partner services. It will also leverage Mastercard Gateway for payment processing, with an initial focus on Mastercard Agent Suite for Merchants.
The Agent Suite is designed to bring AI-powered shopping experiences into merchants’ own e-commerce platforms. It enables AI agents to assist consumers throughout the purchasing process, from product discovery and selection to payment and post-purchase support. Through the collaboration, CrediMax becomes one of the first institutions in Bahrain to work with Mastercard on scaling these capabilities.
Andrew Hocking, Chief Executive Officer of CrediMax, said the partnership would help merchants respond to emerging AI-driven purchasing trends and identify opportunities to support business growth. He noted that CrediMax’s relationships with local merchants would help make the technology more accessible while maintaining existing customer service standards.
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Saud Swar, Mastercard’s Country Manager for Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Jordan and Other Levant, said the collaboration would help align the company’s agentic AI solutions with the operational needs of businesses in Bahrain. He added that Mastercard would provide the technology and security foundations to support the adoption of agentic commerce.
A key component of Mastercard’s approach is Agent Pay, a technology framework designed to support secure and transparent payments initiated by AI agents. It gives AI agents a digital identity that can be authenticated and authorised under permissions set by consumers.
The framework also uses agentic tokens to ensure transactions remain within the limits established by consumers. It provides visibility into which agent initiated a transaction and where the purchase was made.
The collaboration is intended to provide a model for merchants, payment service providers and financial institutions across the region to adopt agent-driven commerce. The companies also plan to explore additional use cases and opportunities to expand the technology into other markets.
