Visa and Mastercard Team With Ant on Know Your Agent Framework

Ant International is working with Visa and Mastercard to develop a know your agent (KYA) interoperability framework, according to a Wednesday (Sept. 9) press release.

The effort is designed to help card networks, digital wallet ecosystems, agent platforms and marketplaces streamline artificial intelligence agent onboarding and identification across networks, per the release.

“AI agents are evolving from making recommendations to completing purchases on behalf of users,” the release said. “By 2030, AI agents are projected to orchestrate $3 trillion to $5 trillion of global consumer commerce. Underlying the mega-trend is the KYA architecture of payment networks and service providers, which establishes requirements and accountability, verifies agent identities and ensures secure, trusted transaction execution.”

All three companies already have their own protocols, according to the release. Visa has Trusted Agent Protocol, Mastercard has Verifiable Intent and Ant International has Agentic Mobile Protocol. They will now explore ways “to work toward common principles.”

The interoperable KYA framework could streamline agentic payment transactions for service providers, agent platforms and marketplaces while maintaining “robust trust guardrails,” per the release.

“With this initiative, agents can benefit from KYA and identity frameworks that enable common trust signals to be recognized across the payment ecosystem,” the release said. “This helps reduce integration complexity and duplicative agent identity verification efforts while maintaining robust trust and risk controls.”

It also allows for faster time-to-market and reduced integration cost for new agentic services, according to the release.

“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 Chief Innovation Officer Jiang-Ming Yang said in the release.

The PYMNTS Intelligence report “How Enterprises Can Build a ’Know Your Agent’ Defense: Digital Identity Verification in the Age of Bots” found in March that nearly 90% of enterprises said bot management has become a major challenge, as outdated digital identity controls cost businesses almost $100 billion each year in fraud, false declines and lost customers.

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