Ant International, Visa and Mastercard have started building a Know-Your-Agent framework, an interoperability standard meant to let payments networks tell which AI agents can be trusted to spend money.
The framework aims to help card networks, digital wallets, agent platforms and marketplaces identify and onboard agents across different ecosystems while each network keeps its own verification and risk controls. The three companies said it will focus on operator traceability, shared certification requirements and continuous transaction monitoring, developed through Singapore’s BuildFin.ai platform convened by the Monetary Authority of Singapore.
Ant is bringing its own implementation to market. At the 2026 Bund Summit, Alipay said it plans an AI wallet agent supporting Vibe Pay, Skill Pay and Machine Pay, plus recurring purchases, assisted buying and assisted booking. That agent sits on Ant Group’s APASS trust infrastructure and the same KYA concepts covering identity, intent, authorization and behavior.
The problem both efforts address is that today’s fraud checks assume a human on the other end of the transaction. When an agent books, buys or renews something on a user’s behalf, the network needs to know who deployed it, what it was authorized to do and whether it is behaving inside those bounds.
Standards work like this is slow, and no certification regime has been agreed. But with agentic commerce moving from demos to live checkouts, the networks that define agent identity early will shape which startups can plug into real payment rails.
