Introducing Worldpay MCP: The context layer for AI agents

AI is moving fast. What started as a wave of recommendation engines is becoming something much bigger.

AI agents are now designing workflows, triggering actions and managing business processes. Soon, they’ll be making purchases, renewing subscriptions and resolving service issues – not as add-ons, but as core parts of the customer experience.

For merchants, that shift to agentic commerce brings both excitement and urgency. AI agents only work if they can understand context and act within it. That means connecting to the real systems that run a business – payments, orders, inventory, support tools and more. Today, that connection is often the biggest blocker.

The challenge: AI without context can’t operate

Most commercial AI today is powerful but isolated. It understands language, not your business. It knows patterns, not your payment rules. It can draft an email, but it can’t configure a routing change or create a one-time token.

To act on your behalf, an AI agent needs:

• A safe, consistent way to access the right data
• Guardrails built by your teams
• Interoperability across tools and platforms
• A real-time understanding of what should happen next

Merchants told us the same thing across industries: “We’re ready for agentic commerce, but our systems aren’t.”

The Worldpay answer: Build with context

Worldpay’s Model Context Protocol (MCP) is designed to solve exactly that. Built on the open Model Context Protocol, Worldpay MCP provides a consistent, secure way for AI to request and share context across systems, without one-off integrations or custom glue code.

Think of it as the connective tissue that turns an AI model into a business-aware assistant.

MCP creates:

• A smarter bridge between AI and the tools you already use, such as OpenAI's Instant Checkout
• Real-time access to live data and actions
• The ability to test, iterate and deploy without long development cycles
• A unified way for developers and operations teams to collaborate

"An ecosystem this big can’t rely on closed boxes."

Most important, MCP is designed for openness. AI agents will only scale if they can plug into merchant systems, partner platforms and global payment networks without friction. An ecosystem this big can’t rely on closed boxes.

Worldpay MCP is available today on Worldpay’s Developer Hub and Github. Developers and merchants can download, modify and deploy the protocol immediately, enabling the rapid creation of AI agents and direct payment integrations with Worldpay’s API.

Why context changes everything

When an AI agent understands context, new possibilities open immediately:

• Automatically retrying a declined payment
• Adjusting routing strategies in real time
• Managing subscription lifecycles
• Triggering payouts to suppliers
• Handling customer workflows without human intervention

"When an AI agent understands context, new possibilities open immediately."

With MCP, merchants don’t need to re-engineer their systems to unlock these capabilities. Developers can integrate once. Operations teams can take control daily. Everyone moves faster.

A step toward the next era of commerce

At Worldpay, we focus on transformation, not trends. Our promise is straightforward: Make the complex simple, innovate for impact and build tools that unlock the potential of every business.

MCP is the first step in a larger vision. As AI agents become more capable, context will define the merchants who scale and the ones who stall.

With MCP, that future becomes a lot more accessible.