Grovity has been selected for the Acceptance program of Mastercard Start Path, the global startup engagement program supporting companies shaping the future of commerce and payments.
We join a cohort of five companies — BizMachine, Grovity AI Growth Lab, Shape Technologies, Unipaas, and Wiseasy — selected to work alongside Mastercard on the infrastructure behind payment acceptance. The program connects each of us to Mastercard Merchant Cloud, the unified foundation that gives merchants modular access to payment, fraud, authentication, tokenization, data, and partner services.
“We’re focused on making acceptance easier at every step. Through this cohort, we’re looking at connecting the value of Merchant Cloud with these startups and helping merchants simplify complexity, scale globally and move faster with confidence.” — Gaurang Shah, EVP, Head of Global Acceptance & Merchant Solutions, Mastercard
Why intent belongs in the authorization decision
Agentic commerce is changing where a transaction actually begins. Long before a payment request reaches an issuer, an AI agent has already had the conversation that produced it — who the buyer is, what they want, and why. Today that context is discarded at exactly the moment it would be most useful.
Grovity deploys AI agents that guide transactions end to end, turning those pre-authorization signals into structured, verifiable intent. That is the premise behind VIBE — the Verifiable Intent Binding Envelope — which travels alongside the payment request so the issuer sees full context at the moment of decision. Higher approval rates, fewer false declines.
“Agentic commerce is transforming how processes and transactions work. We believe real-time buyer intent is the verifiable data that will dramatically improve authorization rates and drive greater productivity, efficiency and trust across financial technology.” — Manuel Steremberg, CEO of Grovity
What comes next
Through Start Path, which Mastercard runs equity-free, Grovity gains access to a global network of financial institutions, payment providers, and merchants — opening new ways to support issuers, acquirers, and PSPs with richer context at the moment of transaction.
Our platform lets companies deploy and manage digital workers that operate across channels and systems, connecting to existing infrastructure with minimal friction or custom IT buildout. By combining intelligent automation with conversational AI, Grovity captures and structures customer intent, so payment providers can better serve merchants and complete transactions with greater confidence.
This milestone reinforces Grovity’s role as an enabler of the payments ecosystem — helping partners unlock more value from every transaction by bringing clarity, context, and verified intent into the flow.
Learn more about Agentic Payments, or book a demo to see it working with your own flows.