As Mastercard launched a new program for autonomous payments between artificial intelligence agents, Ripple put the XRP Ledger (XRPL) and RLUSD forward as infrastructure. XRP was excluded from the enterprise pilot, sharpening a split in how Ripple separates RLUSD and XRP for different uses.

On June 10, blockchain media outlet U.Today reported that Mastercard officially launched the Agent Pay for Machines program.

More than 30 companies, including Stripe, Coinbase and OKX, joined the project. In an official statement, Ripple said the XRP Ledger and regulated stablecoin RLUSD form the foundation of Mastercard’s payment system that verifies robots’ digital passports and controls transaction limits.

The key point is not Ripple’s participation itself, but which asset was adopted in actual payment flows. In Mastercard’s pilot project, its native token XRP was not mentioned. Price stability matters in enterprise payment structures, so RLUSD was selected instead of volatile cryptocurrencies.

RippleX unveiled the XRPL AI Starter Kit, an open-source development tool, and put forward a way to use XRP directly in AI commerce. It is a two-track strategy that emphasizes RLUSD in enterprise payment networks and highlights XRP as the base payment asset in an independent AI development environment.

J. Ayo Akinyele (아요 아키녜레), RippleX’s head of engineering, said the tool applies the x402 protocol to support direct payments between AI agents. That allows AI agents to exchange RLUSD or XRP for API requests or computing services. He also stressed it was designed to support both assets from the first day of release.

It also includes a payment conversion function. When RLUSD is remitted on Mastercard’s side, an embedded XRPL decentralised exchange (DEX) can allow the recipient to receive XRP within 3 to 5 seconds.

Integration has also expanded to Anthropic’s AI model Claude. RippleX explained that Claude Skills integration allows direct handling of wallet creation, balance checks, and transfers of XRP and RLUSD.

Ultimately, the announcement shows Ripple is separating asset roles in the AI payments market. Within Mastercard’s conservative enterprise payments area, XRP was left out and only the regulated stablecoin RLUSD and the XRP Ledger were adopted. RippleX, by contrast, set up an environment to use XRP directly in a separate development stack.

This structure also shows that traditional financial operators such as Mastercard and open-source development ecosystems have different needs. In enterprise payments, price stability and control mechanisms came first, while in an independent AI commerce environment, low fees and direct payments were presented as XRP’s strengths. As a result, Ripple’s AI payments strategy indicated it could develop in a direction where RLUSD serves as an entry point for enterprises for the time being, while XRP targets a role as a settlement asset between developers and agents.

As AI agents begin transacting on behalf of businesses, payments need more than speed. They need trust, controls, and clear rules for how value moves. We're helping build the infrastructure for trusted agent-driven payments, with the XRP Ledger and $RLUSD helping lay the… https://t.co/VyrC5a8e2e pic.twitter.com/OyF5vQIDYZ