Available now, businesses can sign up to Mastercard's Inclusion Hub which features 25 practical measures for venues to adapt, including Sensory Notes, which was piloted at this year's Australian Open and continues to be activated with Melbourne's The Mulberry Group
SYDNEY, Feb. 19, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- One in 40 Australians are autistici, yet many everyday spaces aren't designed with their needs in mind. Sensory overload, unpredictable environments, and lack of clarity can make routine activities inaccessible, limiting where autistic Australians and their caregivers feel comfortable participating in community.
That's why, Mastercard has launched Inclusion Matters, an initiative designed to rally businesses to create calmer more welcoming spaces for autistic people and sensory differences. At its centre is the Inclusion Hub which features 25 measures that venues could adopt to create more inclusive environments for various needs. Available now, businesses can register, explore practical changes from quiet hours to staff training, and build their own action plans with guidance to embed these practices into daily operations.
Mastercard co-designed the Inclusion Hub with Autism CRC, Australia's independent national source of evidence for best practice. Autism CRC works directly with autistic people, families, and professionals to develop practical tools and improve equity and opportunity to support across every stage of life.
Piloting dining innovation
As part of the initiative's launch, Mastercard is piloting Sensory Notes, a new kind of restaurant menu designed to describe dishes in sensory detail, giving autistic people and those with sensory sensitivities more confidence when dining.
Unlike traditional menus that simply list a dish and its ingredients, Sensory Notes unpack the appearance, preparation, arrangement, and taste - useful details that can help autistic people and those with sensory differences understand more about the components of a dish. The framework also outlines tiered ways hospitality venues can integrate and operationalise Sensory Notes based on their size and offering.
Sensory Notes was piloted at this year's Australian Open Wonder Pies and Peach Melbourne venues, and continues to be piloted at The Mulberry Group's Hazel Melbourne.
Kerry Tavrou, Head of Inclusion & Diversity at Tennis Australia, said: "We're committed to making the Australian Open the benchmark of sporting inclusivity. By featuring Sensory Notes on our Accessible page, introducing QR signage at Wonder Pies and Peach Melbourne, and promoting them within the BallPark sensory room, we gave neurodiverse fans the tools they need to feel informed and supported throughout their AO experience."
To ensure Sensory Notes feels integrated into the dining experience, an icon has been created to sit alongside existing dietary symbols like Gluten Free, Vegan, and Pescatarian, providing a subtle signal that additional information about that dish is available.
Guided by its mission to create a digital economy where everyone can participate, Mastercard identified dining as a meaningful opportunity to drive practical change. Inclusion Matters has been developed to demonstrate the empathy and understanding essential to building welcoming environments for all.
Julie Nestor, Executive Vice President, Marketing and Communications, Asia Pacific, Mastercard said: "As a global leader in digital-first innovation and inclusion by design, Mastercard set out to introduce practices that go beyond what's already available. Through the Inclusion Matters initiative, we're making it easier for businesses to build environments where everyone feels considered and welcome. We look forward to refining the hub with ongoing feedback, because a world designed for everyone is priceless."
Crafting Sensory Notes
Working alongside leading chefs and autistic Australians, Mastercard defined how this could work operationally and create meaningful impact. Based on this work, Mastercard created a tool to help businesses craft their very-own Sensory Notes, which is available to restaurants as part of the Inclusion Hub.
MasterChef Australia judge and leading culinary chef, Jean-Christophe Novelli contributed to the framework's development: "Through my experiences dining out with my son Valentino, I've come to understand just how complex and overwhelming restaurant experiences can be for autistic individuals and their caregivers. Dining should be a moment of joy, comfort, and connection, yet uncertainty around food often creates unnecessary barriers. Sensory Notes offers clarity and confidence so everyone can enjoy what should be a simple pleasure of sharing a meal together."
Dr Olivia Gatfield, Autism CRC's Research and Community Engagement Manager, said: "Our role is to listen to and learn from the autistic community, working together through research and co-design. We have focused on what truly matters to them and hope these new innovations are beneficial and can continue to be refined with community feedback."
As the initiative scales, participating businesses will be made discoverable through a consumer directory, making it easier for families to find welcoming venues in their area.
Australian businesses are invited to explore the Hub here.
The 25 practical measures included in the Inclusion Hub:
1. Sensory environment
- Adjust visual and lighting environment
- Adjust sound and noise
- Reduce smells
- Adjust temperature
- Respecting touch, time and space
- Implement quiet hours
- Offer sensory-friendly sessions
- Create low sensory zones
2. Information and communication
- Provide accessibility information online
- Provide clear signage
- Provide accessible menu information
- Include sensory notes in your menu
- Improve store navigation
- Communicate appointment information
- Provide event information
3. Predictability, choice and control
- Manage timing, changes and wait times
- Enable pre-visit communication
- Provide seating options and flexibility
- Offer alternative service options
- Provide alternative checkout options
- Support customer service preferences
4. Staff training and culture
- Deliver autism inclusion training
- Train staff to recognise support identification tools
- Improve hiring practices
- Support your autistic staff
About Mastercard
Mastercard powers economies and empowers people in 200+ countries and territories worldwide. Together with our customers, we're building a resilient economy where everyone can prosper. We support a wide range of digital payments choices, making transactions secure, simple, smart and accessible. Our technology and innovation, partnerships and networks combine to deliver a unique set of products and services that help people, businesses and governments realise their greatest potential.
www.mastercard.com
[i] ASPECT, At least 1 in 40 Australians are… – Autism Spectrum Australia (Aspect)
** The press release content is from PR Newswire. Bastille Post is not involved in its creation. **
Mastercard unveils Inclusion Hub and innovative inclusivity measures co-designed with autistic Australians
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Seed round led by blockchain VC firm Blockchange Ventures. The Unicity Protocol enables AI agents to form peer-to-peer trustless marketplaces at machine speed
ZUG, Switzerland, Feb. 20, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Unicity Labs, a protocol development company building the agentic autonomous internet, has successfully raised $3 million in seed funding. The round was led by Blockchange Ventures, with participation from Tawasal, a Middle East-based communications super app, and Outlier Ventures, a leading Web3 early-stage investor.
The timely raise comes as AI agents (software entities that can independently discover services, negotiate terms, and execute transactions) evolve from conceptual tools into economic actors. The global agentic AI market is projected to exceed $100 billion by 2032. In line with this, Unicity Labs has developed the Unicity Protocol, a peer-to-peer cryptographic architecture enabling autonomous AI agents to discover services, verify counterparties, and transact at machine speed without intermediaries or shared ledgers.
The Unicity Labs team, which previously built and exited Guardtime, a cybersecurity infrastructure company, includes PhD researchers in distributed systems, cryptography, and machine learning. The company recently established the Unicity Foundation in Switzerland to oversee protocol governance, grant funding, and open-source development.
As AI agents become increasingly autonomous, they will need to discover services, negotiate terms, and settle transactions continuously, at scale, without human intervention. Today's infrastructure forces a trade-off: centralize through big tech, sacrificing trustlessness, or rely on traditional blockchains, which bottleneck when millions of agents transact simultaneously.
"Satoshi's whitepaper was titled 'Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash.' Seventeen years later, we still don't have true peer-to-peer or electronic cash. Every transaction still routes through shared ledgers, introducing unnecessary bottlenecks," said Mike Gault, CEO of Unicity Labs. "Unicity changes that. We're not building another marketplace or trading platform. We're building the infrastructure beneath them. Unicity provides the place and the rails that allow agents to discover each other and settle directly, frictionlessly, peer-to-peer, at the scale and speed the agentic economy demands."
"The shared-ledger model that defined the last decade was designed before the AI-driven world we are now entering," said Matt Immerso, General Partner at Blockchange Ventures. "Unicity didn't just patch the old system, they built its successor thanks to their critical innovation that separates transactions from validations. By having the network simply confirm an asset's uniqueness rather than processing its entire context, Unicity delivered the breakthroughs in speed, scale, and cost that are absolute prerequisites for a future powered by autonomous agents."
Tawasal, a leading communications super app in the Middle East serving over five million users, participated in the round as a strategic investor.
"Today, merchants spend enormous amounts acquiring customers - buying ads, competing for attention, hoping for conversions," said Eric Leandri, CEO of Tawasal. "In an agentic economy, merchants don't market to people. They sell to agents - agents that have been instructed about what their users want and are ready to transact. Unicity's infrastructure makes that possible, and it will fundamentally change the economics of commerce."
"The industry has spent a decade optimizing shared ledgers. Unicity asked a different question entirely: what if agents don't need a shared ledger at all?" said Dimitrios Chatzianagnostou, CIO of Outlier Ventures. "That architectural shift is what makes massive scale agent-to-agent commerce possible."
Read the Unicity whitepaper here: https://github.com/unicitynetwork/whitepaper/releases/tag/latest
Mike Gault, Founder of Unicity Labs, and Matt Immerso, Partner at Blockchange Ventures, are available for interviews.
About Unicity Labs
Unicity Labs is building the infrastructure for the autonomous agentic internet. The Unicity Protocol replaces shared ledgers with peer-to-peer cryptographic objects, enabling AI agents to discover, transact, and settle autonomously. Founded by veterans of blockchain and cryptography, Unicity is backed by Blockchange Ventures, Outlier Ventures, and Tawasal. The Unicity Foundation, established in Switzerland, oversees protocol development and community governance. Learn more unicity.ai | https://x.com/unicity_labs | https://sphere.unicity.network
About Blockchange Ventures
Blockchange Ventures is a New York-based venture capital firm investing exclusively in early-stage blockchain companies, protocols, and applications. Founded in 2017, the firm backs extraordinary founders building the infrastructure for the decentralized economy.
About Tawasal
Tawasal SuperApp is a UAE-based secure messaging and digital lifestyle platform serving over five million users across the Middle East. Launched in 2019 in Abu Dhabi, Tawasal offers messaging, video conferencing, trading, and lifestyle services with a focus on data sovereignty and regional infrastructure development.
About Outlier Ventures
Founded in 2014, Outlier Ventures is the world's leading Web3 early stage investor, with a renowned reputation as the go-to authority for Web3 founders, investors and partners. With a portfolio of over 370 global investments and Outlier Ventures has helped raise USD 1 billion in seed funding.
Seed round led by blockchain VC firm Blockchange Ventures. The Unicity Protocol enables AI agents to form peer-to-peer trustless marketplaces at machine speed
ZUG, Switzerland, Feb. 20, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Unicity Labs, a protocol development company building the agentic autonomous internet, has successfully raised $3 million in seed funding. The round was led by Blockchange Ventures, with participation from Tawasal, a Middle East-based communications super app, and Outlier Ventures, a leading Web3 early-stage investor.
The timely raise comes as AI agents (software entities that can independently discover services, negotiate terms, and execute transactions) evolve from conceptual tools into economic actors. The global agentic AI market is projected to exceed $100 billion by 2032. In line with this, Unicity Labs has developed the Unicity Protocol, a peer-to-peer cryptographic architecture enabling autonomous AI agents to discover services, verify counterparties, and transact at machine speed without intermediaries or shared ledgers.
The Unicity Labs team, which previously built and exited Guardtime, a cybersecurity infrastructure company, includes PhD researchers in distributed systems, cryptography, and machine learning. The company recently established the Unicity Foundation in Switzerland to oversee protocol governance, grant funding, and open-source development.
As AI agents become increasingly autonomous, they will need to discover services, negotiate terms, and settle transactions continuously, at scale, without human intervention. Today's infrastructure forces a trade-off: centralize through big tech, sacrificing trustlessness, or rely on traditional blockchains, which bottleneck when millions of agents transact simultaneously.
"Satoshi's whitepaper was titled 'Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash.' Seventeen years later, we still don't have true peer-to-peer or electronic cash. Every transaction still routes through shared ledgers, introducing unnecessary bottlenecks," said Mike Gault, CEO of Unicity Labs. "Unicity changes that. We're not building another marketplace or trading platform. We're building the infrastructure beneath them. Unicity provides the place and the rails that allow agents to discover each other and settle directly, frictionlessly, peer-to-peer, at the scale and speed the agentic economy demands."
"The shared-ledger model that defined the last decade was designed before the AI-driven world we are now entering," said Matt Immerso, General Partner at Blockchange Ventures. "Unicity didn't just patch the old system, they built its successor thanks to their critical innovation that separates transactions from validations. By having the network simply confirm an asset's uniqueness rather than processing its entire context, Unicity delivered the breakthroughs in speed, scale, and cost that are absolute prerequisites for a future powered by autonomous agents."
Tawasal, a leading communications super app in the Middle East serving over five million users, participated in the round as a strategic investor.
"Today, merchants spend enormous amounts acquiring customers - buying ads, competing for attention, hoping for conversions," said Eric Leandri, CEO of Tawasal. "In an agentic economy, merchants don't market to people. They sell to agents - agents that have been instructed about what their users want and are ready to transact. Unicity's infrastructure makes that possible, and it will fundamentally change the economics of commerce."
"The industry has spent a decade optimizing shared ledgers. Unicity asked a different question entirely: what if agents don't need a shared ledger at all?" said Dimitrios Chatzianagnostou, CIO of Outlier Ventures. "That architectural shift is what makes massive scale agent-to-agent commerce possible."
Read the Unicity whitepaper here: https://github.com/unicitynetwork/whitepaper/releases/tag/latest
Mike Gault, Founder of Unicity Labs, and Matt Immerso, Partner at Blockchange Ventures, are available for interviews.
About Unicity Labs
Unicity Labs is building the infrastructure for the autonomous agentic internet. The Unicity Protocol replaces shared ledgers with peer-to-peer cryptographic objects, enabling AI agents to discover, transact, and settle autonomously. Founded by veterans of blockchain and cryptography, Unicity is backed by Blockchange Ventures, Outlier Ventures, and Tawasal. The Unicity Foundation, established in Switzerland, oversees protocol development and community governance. Learn more unicity.ai | https://x.com/unicity_labs | https://sphere.unicity.network
About Blockchange Ventures
Blockchange Ventures is a New York-based venture capital firm investing exclusively in early-stage blockchain companies, protocols, and applications. Founded in 2017, the firm backs extraordinary founders building the infrastructure for the decentralized economy.
About Tawasal
Tawasal SuperApp is a UAE-based secure messaging and digital lifestyle platform serving over five million users across the Middle East. Launched in 2019 in Abu Dhabi, Tawasal offers messaging, video conferencing, trading, and lifestyle services with a focus on data sovereignty and regional infrastructure development.
About Outlier Ventures
Founded in 2014, Outlier Ventures is the world's leading Web3 early stage investor, with a renowned reputation as the go-to authority for Web3 founders, investors and partners. With a portfolio of over 370 global investments and Outlier Ventures has helped raise USD 1 billion in seed funding.
** The press release content is from PR Newswire. Bastille Post is not involved in its creation. **
Unicity Labs Raises $3M to Scale Autonomous Agentic Marketplaces
