Visa, Mastercard, Ant International Launch KYA Framework for AI Agent Payments

Ant International, Mastercard and Visa have begun collaboration on a Know-Your-Agent (KYA) interoperability framework for agentic commerce, the companies announced on September 10, 2026, citing a projection that by 2030 AI agents will orchestrate US$3 trillion to US$5 trillion of global consumer commerce.

The framework is designed to help card networks, digital wallet ecosystems, agent platforms and marketplaces streamline agent onboarding and identification across networks. It rests on shared principles while preserving each network’s own verification and decisioning processes. According to the announcement, the KYA architecture of payment networks and service providers establishes requirements and accountability, verifies agent identities, and ensures secure, trusted transaction execution.

The cited figure matches a projection published on January 28, 2026 by McKinsey’s QuantumBlack research unit, which states that even under moderate scenarios AI agents could mediate $3 trillion to $5 trillion of global consumer commerce by 2030. The McKinsey article describes agentic commerce as unfolding along a six-level automation curve, from programmed convenience such as subscription replenishment to a still-emerging stage of networked multiagent commerce in which personal agents negotiate directly with a network of specialized agents. It identifies open-source protocols including MCP, A2A, AP2, ACP and UCP as rails enabling agents to read data, negotiate with other agents and transact safely.

Framework Mechanics and Trust Signals

The KYA collaboration centers on three elements. Cross-network Operator Traceability links each agent to a validated operator, cardholder, or business or organization, enabling clear attribution of agent activity. Shared Certification Requirements assess each agent against security and behavioral requirements to ensure it operates as expected. Continuous Transaction Monitoring evaluates each agent using a combination of identity and transaction-related signals to support ongoing assessments and certification.

The companies said the interoperable KYA framework could simplify agentic payment transactions for service providers, agent platforms and marketplaces while upholding trust guardrails. With the initiative, common trust signals can be recognized across the payment ecosystem while maintaining risk controls, reducing integration complexity and duplicative agent identity verification. The companies said this will enable faster time-to-market and lower integration cost for new agentic services, with greater trust and risk visibility across participating networks.

Existing Protocols

The three organizations have each previously rolled out their own protocols: Visa’s Trusted Agent Protocol, Mastercard Verifiable Intent and Ant International’s Agentic Mobile Protocol. They will now explore opportunities to work towards common principles.

Ant International launched the open-sourced Agentic Mobile Protocol (AMP) on April 28, 2026, describing it as the world’s first agentic payment framework designed for mobile interfaces, including digital wallets, banking apps, super apps and wearable devices. The AMP framework includes a full-spectrum KYA framework that establishes an agent’s digital identity and certifies its authorised capabilities, plus an Agent Trust Rating mechanism that determines whether an agent is trustworthy and controls its level of autonomy. Ant International said the protocol reduces the number of steps required to link a payment agent to a digital wallet by 50% compared with traditional card-binding methods, backs every agent-initiated transaction with a money-back guarantee for payment partners in cases of account takeover, and is capable of handling agent-to-agent transactions as small as $0.000001 with real-time accounting and clearing. The company said at the time that it was among the first partners of Mastercard and Visa to pilot card-based transaction capabilities for AI agents, while collaborating with Google on its protocols for agentic commerce and payments.

BuildFin.ai and Singapore’s SAFR Framework

Building on the Safeguards for Agentic Finance at Runtime (SAFR) framework, Ant International, Mastercard and Visa will collaborate through BuildFin.ai to advance common approaches for AI agent verification, accountability and risk management across payment ecosystems in Singapore. BuildFin.ai is an industry platform convened by the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) that brings together financial institutions, technology providers and researchers to develop and scale responsible AI solutions for financial services.

MAS published the SAFR white paper on July 3, 2026, proposing an industry-developed framework that enables AI agents in financial services to carry out financial tasks safely, securely and reliably. SAFR provides governance checkpoints that verify and record an AI agent’s proposed actions before the execution of its tasks, and it builds on the AI Risk Management toolkit developed under MAS’s Project Mindforge. The white paper sets out how safeguards including policy-bound execution, real-time validation, auditability and interoperability can be embedded into system operations. MAS said industry members have applied the framework across use cases including agent-assisted payments and treasury operations, wealth management and advisory workflows, and client engagement.

Executive Statements

“As AI agents become a bigger part of how people discover and buy, trust must scale with them,” said Rubail Birwadker, Visa’s global head of growth products and strategic partnerships. He said collaborations like this one can help create more consistency, better accountability and greater confidence across the payments ecosystem as AI-driven transactions become more common.

Pablo Fourez, Mastercard’s chief digital officer, said interoperability across KYA frameworks is essential to making agentic commerce work at scale, giving merchants, platforms, wallets and issuers a consistent way to recognise trusted agents, verify that actions reflect the user’s intent and preserve accountability across the transaction. He said Mastercard Verifiable Intent was designed for this open ecosystem.

“Interoperable KYA between card and wallet networks is critical for securing trust for our payment partners, platforms and merchants in agentic commerce,” said Jiang-Ming Yang, chief innovation officer of Ant International. He said Ant International looks 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 clients and their customers.

MAS said interested industry partners are invited to join the BuildFin.ai work group to contribute to and help shape subsequent iterations of SAFR, and that the Future of Finance Institute will support future adoption of the framework through industry pilots and sandbox experimentation to help financial institutions test and deploy SAFR-aligned solutions.