Visa, Mastercard and Ant International begin Know-Your-Agent interoperability work

The card networks and Ant are collaborating on shared agent-identity principles. This is a framework effort, not a live cross-network standard.

On 10 September 2026 Ant International, Mastercard and Visa said they have begun collaboration on a Know-Your-Agent interoperability framework so card networks, wallets, agent platforms and marketplaces can recognise trusted agents while keeping their own verification and risk processes. The work builds on Visa Trusted Agent Protocol, Mastercard Verifiable Intent and Ant’s Agentic Mobile Protocol, and will proceed through MAS-convened BuildFin.ai and the SAFR runtime-safeguards effort. The companies cite a McKinsey projection that AI agents could orchestrate US$3 trillion to US$5 trillion of global consumer commerce by 2030; that figure is their cited third-party forecast, not a zFinia measurement. No implementation timetable, merchant pilot list or settlement volume was published.

Why it matters

Consumer-agent checkout is colliding with the identity problem: merchants need to know which software is acting, for whom, and under what authority. That is adjacent to, not the same as, machine-native x402 discovery and HTTP 402 settlement.

Source: Ant International / PR Newswire

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