Ant International, Visa and Mastercard team up on a shared standard for verifying AI payment agents
The proposed Know-Your-Agent framework would let an AI agent be recognized across competing payment networks without separately registering with each one, building on protocols the three firms already run individually.
Ant International, Visa and Mastercard announced a partnership to develop a shared Know-Your-Agent, or KYA, interoperability framework for payments initiated by AI agents rather than by a person directly tapping a card or app.
The premise is that AI agents acting on a consumer's behalf — booking, buying or paying without a human clicking through each step — need some way to be identified, verified and monitored across payment networks. Right now, each of the three companies runs its own version of that idea in isolation: Visa's Trusted Agent Protocol, Mastercard's Verifiable Intent, and Ant International's Agentic Mobile Protocol. The announced collaboration aims to let an agent recognized under one of those systems be trusted across the others, rather than needing separate registration with each network.
The three companies said the work will be convened through BuildFin.ai, a platform run by the Monetary Authority of Singapore, positioning the effort as an industry standard rather than a proprietary system belonging to any single company.
Agentic commerce — AI systems that complete a purchase or payment rather than only recommending one — has become a stated priority across the payments industry over the past year, with banks, card networks and payments companies each describing some version of infrastructure meant for it. A shared verification standard addresses a specific problem that follows from that shift: if every network requires its own separate agent registration, an AI agent capable of transacting broadly would need to clear as many hurdles as there are networks, which works against the interoperability agentic commerce is supposed to deliver.
The announcement describes a framework the three companies intend to build together, not a completed or shipped standard, and no timeline for adoption or a live rollout was disclosed alongside it.