The news
On September 10, 2026, Ant International, Visa (V) and Mastercard (MA) agreed to build a shared Know Your Agent framework for verifying AI shopping agents, so an agent vetted by one payment network can be recognized by the others.
According to Ant International's announcement, the goal is to simplify how AI agents are onboarded and identified across card and wallet networks while each company keeps its own verification checks. The companies described three pillars: tracing every agent back to a validated operator, cardholder or business; shared certification requirements that test an agent's security and behavior for the tasks it is expected to perform; and continuous monitoring that uses identity and transaction signals after an agent goes live.
Each company arrives with its own technology. Visa's Trusted Agent Protocol launched in October 2025, Mastercard's Verifiable Intent was introduced in March 2026 and was co-developed with Google, and Ant International released its Agentic Mobile Protocol in April 2026, according to crypto and fintech outlet Forkast. The new framework is meant to connect those systems rather than replace them.
Ant said the work will run through BuildFin.ai, a program convened by the Monetary Authority of Singapore, to develop common approaches to verifying AI agents. Mastercard chief digital officer Pablo Fourez said interoperability is "essential to making agentic commerce work at scale."
The companies cited a projection that AI agents could orchestrate $3 trillion to $5 trillion of global consumer commerce by 2030; Unite.AI traced the figure to a McKinsey projection published in January 2026. It is a forecast, not a measure of current activity, and none of the three companies disclosed how much agent-initiated spending already runs over their networks.
What the announcement did not include matters as much. Forkast reported that no technical specifications, governance body or rollout timeline were disclosed, and a Forkast analysis published September 21 noted the absence of pilot volumes, named merchants or an enforcement plan for the shared certification rules.
The numbers
- Projected consumer commerce orchestrated by AI agents by 2030 (cited by the companies; McKinsey projection per Unite.AI)
- $3 trillion to $5 trillion
- Framework pillars
- 3
- U.S. consumers who trust generative AI to handle payment transactions on their behalf (Visa/Harris Poll)
- 23%
- U.S. consumers who have used an AI assistant (Visa/Harris Poll)
- 72%
Why CEOs should care
For merchants and e-commerce leaders, the practical question is how agent-initiated orders will be identified at checkout. Ask your payment processor which agent protocols it already supports, how it flags a transaction started by an agent rather than a person, and whether the card networks' agent verification changes fraud screening or dispute rights. Until specifications exist, avoid building separate integrations for each network's protocol unless a large share of your traffic already comes from agents.
For CFOs and risk leaders, the monitoring pillar signals that networks will watch agent behavior over time, which could affect approval rates and liability when an agent buys the wrong item. Update chargeback and refund policies to cover agent purchases, and ask acquirers who bears the loss when a verified agent makes an unauthorized purchase. CISOs should treat AI agents as a new class of machine identity: decide which agents may reach your checkout, and log how each one authenticates.
Boards should weigh adoption against trust. In a Harris Poll survey of 2,065 U.S. adults, fielded May 26-28, 2026 and released by Visa on September 9, 72% said they had used an AI assistant but only 23% said they trust generative AI to handle payment transactions on their behalf. That gap suggests agent checkout is worth piloting now, but not worth re-platforming around.
The bigger picture
Agent shopping is already live in the United States. On September 8, Stripe said Meta's new Muse assistant can pay through Stripe's Link wallet: at businesses that accept Link it checks out with the consumer's saved payment method, and elsewhere Link issues a single-use virtual card scoped to the approved purchase. The industry is still working out identity: FIDO Alliance CEO Andrew Shikiar told Payments Dive on September 25 that his group is working on authentication that ties agent transactions back to an authorized person, and he listed merchant confidence, consumer protection and chargeback liability as barriers. Our read: the Know Your Agent framework is the networks' bid to own that trust layer, and Ant International's participation stretches it from card networks to digital wallets.
What’s next
Watch for three things: published technical specifications and a certification body, the first pilots with named merchants, and whether other wallets and processors join. Merchants heading into the holiday season should decide now whether to allow, limit or block unidentified agents; the companies have given no rollout timeline, so merchants should not count on the shared verification rules this season.
