Visa Mastercard Ant develop shared framework to verify AI agents

Ant International, Visa and Mastercard are developing a shared Know-Your-Agent framework to help payment networks, digital wallets, merchants and platforms verify AI agents and link them to accountable people or organizations. The framework would establish common trust, security, certification and monitoring signals while allowing each company to retain its own verification and risk-decision systems, potentially reducing duplicate onboarding and integration costs. The initiative builds on Visa’s Trusted Agent Protocol, Mastercard’s Verifiable Intent and Ant International’s Agentic Mobile Protocol, as well as Antom’s agentic-payment pilots supporting card and wallet transactions. The companies cite projections that AI agents could orchestrate $3 trillion to $5 trillion in consumer commerce by 2030, but the market remains nascent and the actual payment volume is uncertain. The collaboration also reflects a strategic contest over which payment rails will capture that commerce, since AI agents may favor bank transfers, wallets or stablecoins over traditional card networks unless Visa and Mastercard can remain central to settlement and trust.