Ant, Mastercard, Visa Team Up On AI Agent Verification
Ant International, Mastercard and Visa announced they have begun working together on a Know-Your-Agent (KYA) interoperability framework, an effort aimed at establishing shared standards for verifying artificial intelligence agents that initiate payments on behalf of consumers and businesses.
The three companies said the collaboration is designed to support the growth of what the industry calls agentic commerce, transactions in which AI-driven software agents search for products, compare prices and complete purchases with minimal direct human input. As these tools move from experimental use into mainstream shopping and business procurement, payment networks and technology firms have been racing to build the infrastructure needed to confirm that an AI agent acting on a person’s behalf is legitimate, authorized and trustworthy.
According to the announcement, the KYA framework would allow different platforms and payment networks to recognize and verify AI agents across systems, rather than requiring each company to build its own separate verification process. Ant International, the international arm of the Chinese fintech giant that operates Alipay-linked services across Asia and beyond, joins Mastercard and Visa, the two largest global card networks, in what the companies describe as an early-stage collaboration intended to scale trust in automated transactions as adoption increases.
The push toward agent verification reflects a broader shift underway in the payments industry, where major networks have spent the past year rolling out protocols and pilot programs aimed at accommodating AI-initiated purchases. Visa has previously introduced tools allowing AI agents to shop and pay within set spending limits, while Mastercard has pursued similar initiatives to let agents act as authorized purchasers tied to a cardholder’s identity. Ant Group and its international unit have likewise invested heavily in AI-driven commerce tools across the markets it serves, including Southeast Asia, the Middle East and parts of Europe.
Industry analysts have flagged identity verification as one of the central challenges standing in the way of widespread agentic commerce. Unlike a traditional online purchase, where a human enters card details and confirms a transaction, an AI agent acting autonomously raises questions about who is legally and financially responsible if something goes wrong, how merchants can be sure a request is authentic, and how fraud can be detected when the buyer is software rather than a person. A shared Know-Your-Agent standard, similar in spirit to Know-Your-Customer rules that banks already use to verify human account holders, could give merchants and card issuers a common reference point for deciding whether to trust a transaction initiated by an automated system.
Payment executives have also pointed to interoperability as a make-or-break issue for the sector. If each network or technology company builds its own closed system for verifying AI agents, merchants and consumers could end up navigating a fragmented landscape where an agent trusted on one platform is rejected on another. By working jointly on shared standards, Ant International, Mastercard and Visa are positioning themselves to help set the rules for an emerging segment of commerce before it becomes standard practice, a strategy consistent with how card networks have historically shaped rules around chip cards, contactless payments and online authentication.
The companies did not disclose a timeline for finalizing or deploying the KYA framework, nor did they specify which markets might see early pilots. The initiative comes as regulators in several countries have begun examining how existing consumer protection and fraud rules apply to AI-driven purchasing, adding pressure on payment providers to demonstrate that safeguards are in place before agentic commerce scales further.
This announcement was first reported via Business Wire.
