Ant International, Visa and Mastercard announced on September 9, 2026 that they are collaborating on an interoperable Know Your Agent (KYA) framework to onboard, identify and authorise AI shopping agents across their networks. It is the first time the three payments giants have publicly aligned on a shared identity standard for agentic commerce, an area PYMNTS Intelligence estimates could orchestrate $3 trillion to $5 trillion of consumer commerce by 2030.
Three protocols, one framework
Each company brought its own agentic-commerce protocol to the table. Visa has its Trusted Agent Protocol, Mastercard has Verifiable Intent, and Ant International has its Agentic Mobile Protocol. Rather than force one to win, the trio said they will "work toward common principles" so that the same trust signals — agent identity, capabilities, behavioural risk and execution performance — can be recognised across every network. The stated goal: fewer duplicative identity checks, lower integration cost for agent platforms and marketplaces, and faster time-to-market for new agentic services.
Why now
AI agents have moved from generating recommendations to actually placing orders and executing payments on users' behalf, and payment networks are being asked to underwrite transactions where a bot — not the cardholder — is at the checkout. Ant International Chief Innovation Officer Jiang-Ming Yang said the group expects to expand collaboration as the industry taps richer signals to enhance trust. PYMNTS Intelligence recently found nearly 90% of enterprises now regard bot management as a major challenge, with outdated digital-identity controls costing businesses close to $100 billion each year in fraud, false declines and lost customers.
Guardrails for a bot-driven checkout
The KYA framework is designed to sit alongside — not replace — existing KYC and KYB rails, extending them with agent-specific attributes so that card networks, digital wallets, agent platforms and marketplaces can all recognise a trusted AI shopper. The three companies frame it as a "robust trust guardrail" that keeps consumer protections intact as more spending flows through automated agents. Regulators are watching closely, and the collaboration slots into a broader industry push evident in Meta's Muse agent tie-up with Stripe and Shop Pay and Anthropic's threat-intelligence work around agent misuse.
Reporting based on coverage from Business Wire, PYMNTS and Electronic Payments International.