Mastercard has partnered with Subway, FreshDirect and The Cheesecake Factory to bring Masterpass-enabled bots to Facebook Messenger.

Through the use of AI technology, the bots enable consumers to interact with retailers, build their order and pay using Masterpass from within the Messenger app. The bots will also support Masterpass-enabled wallets from banks including Citi and Capital One.

“The Mastercard vision is to support all forms of commerce – addressing the full range of retailer experiences and consumer needs, and ensuring that every one of our accounts is as digital as the people using them,” said Garry Lyons, CIO at Mastercard. “Masterpass-enabled bots on Messenger offer both merchants and consumers innovative, compelling and secure digital payments on an extremely popular and active platform.”

Earlier this year, Mastercard partnered with Turkish mobile retail firm Getir to integrate Masterpass into Getir’s Messenger bot. This represented the ‘first use’ of Masterpass through a bot on Messenger.

David Marcus, VP of Messenger, said: “Building automated and AI-driven capabilities like bots to conduct commerce will make it easier than ever to interact with people in new, engaging ways.”