Visa, Mastercard and Ant International begin work on AI-agent payment framework
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The Facts
- Visa, Mastercard and Ant International began collaborating on a Know-Your-Agent interoperability framework.
- The framework concerns AI agents that can make purchases on behalf of users.
- The framework is intended for card networks, digital wallets, agent platforms and online marketplaces.
- Participants would use shared principles for AI-agent identification and onboarding.
- Each participating network would retain its own verification and decision-making processes.
- Visa, Mastercard and Ant International previously launched separate AI-agent payment protocols.
- The companies will explore ways to align their existing protocols around common principles.
Context
What is Know-Your-Agent?
Know-Your-Agent is a proposed interoperability framework for identifying and onboarding AI agents across payment networks and related platforms. TechNode NASDAQ Stock Market
Will the framework replace Visa's, Mastercard's or Ant International's existing systems?
No replacement was announced. The companies said each network would keep its own verification and decision-making processes while exploring common principles. Investing.com Yahoo! Finance
Which existing protocols are involved?
The collaboration builds on Visa's Trusted Agent Protocol, Mastercard's Verifiable Intent and Ant International's Agentic Mobile Protocol. NASDAQ Stock Market NASDAQ Stock Market
Where Left and Right agree, and where they split
- Where Left and Right agree
- Each firm keeps its own verification and decision-making even as all three align around shared principles for identifying and onboarding AI agents that spend on users' behalf.
- Where Left and Right split
- Whether the lack of a public standard over AI-agent spending is an accountability gap needing outside rules, or a sensible arrangement letting the firms bearing the losses set the terms.
- Why they won’t converge
- The divide is trust-in-institution: the left treats industry-drafted identification standards as a governance gap needing public oversight, while the right treats the firms bearing transaction risk as the legitimate rule-writers, and no shared fact about the framework's mechanics resolves who should hold that authority.
How left and right read it
When software can spend your money, the rules governing it belong in public law, not in a private framework built by the largest payment firms. Visa, Mastercard and Ant International are drafting shared principles for identifying and onboarding AI agents across card networks, wallets and marketplaces, yet each would keep its own verification and decision-making in-house. That is accountability without a public standard. Who audits the agents that get approved?
Rules for new technology are best written by the firms that eat the losses when they fail. That is why it matters that Visa, Mastercard and Ant International each launched their own AI-agent payment protocols first and are only now exploring alignment around shared principles for identifying and onboarding agents that purchase for users, because each still retains its own verification and decision-making. Keep it voluntary — interoperability earned, not imposed.
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