Visa, Mastercard, Ant Int'l Team Up on AI Agent Payment Standards

Ant International has partnered with Visa and Mastercard to develop common standards for identifying and monitoring AI agents involved in payments. The Know Your Agent framework aims to ensure that merchants and payment providers can verify which AI agents are behind transactions and whether they are authorized to act.

The collaboration comes as payment companies prepare for AI systems that can search for products, place orders, and make payments for consumers and businesses. McKinsey projects AI agents could handle $3 trillion to $5 trillion of global consumer commerce by 2030.

Jiang-Ming Yang, chief innovation officer at Ant International, emphasized the importance of trust in the AI transformation: 'Trust is the foundation of the AI transformation.'

The companies will establish common methods for linking an AI agent to a valid entity, evaluating its behavior, and monitoring its activity. They aim to achieve interoperability between their separate systems, so an agent that has already established its identity with one payment provider would not need to repeat the process with another.