Visa, Mastercard & Ant International back AI agent trust

Ant International, Mastercard and Visa have begun collaborating on a Know-Your-Agent interoperability framework focused on AI agents in payments and digital commerce.

The work is intended to help card networks, digital wallet ecosystems, agent platforms and marketplaces streamline the onboarding and identification of AI agents across networks. The framework is being designed around shared principles while allowing each network to retain its own verification and decision-making processes.

AI agents are increasingly moving beyond product recommendations to completing purchases on behalf of users. That shift has pushed payments groups to develop systems to verify agent identities, link them to accountable operators and monitor their activity during transactions.

Ant International, Mastercard and Visa have each already introduced their own approaches, including Visa's Trusted Agent Protocol, Mastercard Verifiable Intent and Ant International's Agentic Mobile Protocol.

The collaboration will explore common principles across those systems. The goal is to create recognised trust signals that can be used across card and wallet networks, reducing repeated identity checks and easing integration work for service providers and marketplaces.

The framework centres on three areas. One is cross-network operator traceability, linking each agent to a validated operator, cardholder, business or organisation. Another is shared certification requirements covering security and behavioural standards. The third is continuous transaction monitoring using identity and transaction-related signals.

Those measures are intended to support accountability as AI agents handle more commercial activity. Industry estimates cited by the companies project that AI agents could orchestrate USD $3 trillion to $5 trillion of global consumer commerce by 2030.

Singapore platform

The work will be pursued through BuildFin.ai in Singapore, an industry platform convened by the Monetary Authority of Singapore. It brings together financial institutions, technology providers and researchers to develop and scale responsible AI tools for financial services.

The collaboration also builds on the Safeguards for Agentic Finance at Runtime framework, known as SAFR. It is intended to advance common approaches to AI agent verification, accountability and risk management across payment ecosystems.

Payments providers are under pressure to set governance standards for AI-driven transactions before consumer use broadens further. A common framework could help merchants, wallets and platforms identify trusted agents across participating systems without rebuilding compliance processes for each network.

Visa said the issue centres on how to maintain trust as autonomous commerce expands.

"As AI agents become a bigger part of how people discover and buy, trust must scale with them," said Rubail Birwadker, Global Head of Growth Products and Strategic Partnerships, Visa. "Visa has played a leading role in creating the trust frameworks that make agentic commerce possible through the development of innovations such as Visa's Trusted Agent Protocol. Collaborations like this can help create more consistency, better accountability, and greater confidence across the payments ecosystem as AI-driven transactions become more common."

Mastercard said interoperability is central to wider adoption of agentic commerce across merchants, issuers and digital platforms.

"Interoperability across Know-Your-Agent frameworks is essential to making agentic commerce work at scale, giving merchants, platforms, wallets and issuers a consistent way to recognise trusted agents, verify that actions reflect the user's intent, and preserve accountability across the transaction," said Pablo Fourez, Chief Digital Officer, Mastercard. "Mastercard Verifiable Intent was designed for this open ecosystem, helping ensure that as commerce becomes more autonomous, every interaction remains secure, transparent and grounded in consent."

Ant International said shared arrangements between wallet and card networks will be important as more signals are used to assess the behaviour and reliability of AI agents.

"Interoperable KYA between card and wallet networks is critical for securing trust for our payment partners, platforms and merchants in agentic commerce," said Jiang-Ming Yang, Chief Innovation Officer, Ant International. "We look forward to expanding collaboration as the industry draws on richer signals - capabilities, behavior, execution performance, and risk data - to enhance trust and simplify transactions for our clients and their customers."

Ant International said its Alipay+ network connects 150 million merchants with more than 50 digital wallets and banking apps, reaching 2 billion user accounts.