Ant International, Mastercard, and Visa have announced a collaboration to develop a Know-Your-Agent (KYA) interoperability framework. This initiative is set to simplify agentic payment transactions by enabling common trust signals across the payment ecosystem. The collaboration aims to reduce integration complexity and duplicative identity verification efforts, thus lowering costs and improving time-to-market for new services.
The KYA framework will build on existing protocols—Visa’s Trusted Agent Protocol, Mastercard Verifiable Intent, and Ant International’s Agentic Mobile Protocol. By 2030, AI agents are expected to manage $3 trillion to 5 trillion in global consumer commerce, highlighting the need for robust identity and trust frameworks.
The framework focuses on three key areas: cross-network operator traceability, shared certification requirements, and continuous transaction monitoring. These measures aim to ensure secure and trusted transaction execution across participating networks.
The collaboration will leverage BuildFin.ai, an industry platform convened by the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), to advance AI agent verification and risk management. This effort is crucial for enabling AI agents to operate safely across payment ecosystems whilst maintaining strong safeguards for consumers and merchants.
Rubail Birwadker of Visa emphasised the importance of trust scaling with AI agents, stating, “Collaborations like this can help create more consistency, better accountability, and greater confidence across the payments ecosystem.” Pablo Fourez of Mastercard highlighted the need for interoperability to ensure secure and transparent transactions. Jiang-Ming Yang of Ant International noted the critical role of interoperable KYA in securing trust for payment partners and merchants.
This initiative marks a significant step towards enhancing the reliability and efficiency of agentic commerce, paving the way for more autonomous and secure digital transactions.
