Ant International has partnered with Visa and Mastercard to develop common standards for identifying and monitoring AI agents as autonomous software takes on a larger role in global payments.
Summary
- Ant International, Visa and Mastercard will develop common standards for identifying, verifying and monitoring AI agents involved in payments.
- The Know Your Agent framework is designed so an agent registered with one participating payment provider would not need to repeat the process with another.
- McKinsey projects AI agents could handle $3 trillion to $5 trillion of global consumer commerce by 2030.
- Alipay has begun allowing users to schedule recurring Starbucks orders and ride hailing requests through its AI tools.
Ant International said Thursday that the companies will work on an interoperable “Know Your Agent” framework designed to let merchants and payment providers verify which AI agents are behind transactions and whether they are authorized to act.
The work comes as payment companies prepare for AI systems that can search for products, place orders and make payments for consumers and businesses. Ant cited McKinsey projections that AI agents could handle between $3 trillion and $5 trillion of global consumer commerce by 2030.
Jiang-Ming Yang, chief innovation officer at Ant International, said safeguards will be needed as agents gain more authority over financial transactions because AI systems can produce incorrect information or take actions users did not intend.
“Trust is the foundation of the AI transformation,” Yang told CNBC.
Ant, Visa and Mastercard target a common AI agent identity system
Under the collaboration, Ant International, Visa and Mastercard plan to establish common methods for linking an AI agent to a valid entity, evaluating its behavior and monitoring its activity.
The companies are focusing on interoperability between their separate systems so an agent that has already established its identity with one payment provider would not necessarily have to repeat the process with another.
“If [an] agent registers with Ant, they don’t need to register again with Visa, Mastercard,” Yang said.
Such a system would give merchants and payment processors a consistent way to determine which software agent is requesting a transaction and the party on whose behalf it is operating.
Pablo Fourez, chief digital officer at Mastercard, said interoperability between Know Your Agent frameworks will be needed if agentic commerce is to operate across different platforms.
“Interoperability across Know-Your-Agent frameworks is essential to making agentic commerce work at scale,” Fourez said, stressing the need for merchants and payment companies to consistently identify AI agents they can trust.
Each of the three companies has spent the past year developing its own technology for AI-led payments. Mastercard on Wednesday launched Agent Connect, a system that gives merchants a single integration for product discovery, cart creation and customer-approved payments across AI shopping platforms.
Agent Connect works with Mastercard Agent Pay, which records customer authority through tokenized permissions when an AI system is allowed to make a purchase. Merchants and payment providers can use the permission to determine whether the transaction falls within instructions provided by the customer.
Visa and Mastercard have been building their own agent payment rails
Visa has been developing a separate stack for autonomous payments. In April, the company introduced Intelligent Commerce Connect, bringing payment initiation, tokenization, authentication and spending controls into infrastructure designed for AI agents.
The system allows agents to search for products and complete transactions on behalf of consumers while using Visa’s existing payment network and security tools.
Visa expanded that work in June with new AI and stablecoin capabilities, including a partnership with OpenAI to support payments within agentic commerce experiences. Its stablecoin settlement activity had reached a $7 billion annualized run rate at the time, crypto.news previously reported.
Mastercard has taken a similar route through Agent Pay for Machines. The company unveiled the payment network in June with support from more than 30 payment, blockchain and technology companies, including Ripple, Coinbase, Stripe, Adyen and the Solana Foundation.
The network was built for transactions initiated by autonomous software, including high-volume and low-value payments. Users can set spending limits, authorization requirements and settlement conditions, while transactions can run through conventional payment networks or stablecoin rails.
Both card companies have consequently been developing controls for a payment environment in which the person buying a product may not directly interact with the merchant’s checkout page.
Ant brings more than 50 digital wallets into agentic commerce push
Ant International gives the collaboration access to another part of the global payments market through Alipay+, its cross-border payment and digitalization platform.
More than 50 electronic wallets have partnered with Ant International through Alipay+, according to the company. Such wallets are widely used in markets where consumers frequently rely on mobile payment systems instead of physical credit or debit cards.
Digital wallets represented 56% of global e-commerce transaction value and 33% of point-of-sale value in 2025, according to Worldpay data cited by the companies. Total spending through the payment method exceeded $13 trillion.
Card networks and digital wallets have become increasingly connected as wallets add support for cards and other funding sources, giving AI payment systems multiple routes through which transactions could eventually be completed.
Visa has already been testing combinations of AI payments and blockchain-based settlement. Wirex joined Visa’s Agentic Ready program in June to test AI agents making stablecoin payments, initially focusing on software subscriptions, marketing spending and procurement.
The tests were designed to determine how autonomous software could initiate financial transactions while preserving security controls and user authority.
Stablecoins have become another part of the infrastructure being developed for machine-led transactions. Visa and Artemis said in July that stablecoins could be suited to low-value machine-to-machine payments, while traditional cards could continue handling consumer purchases.
Alipay is already letting users automate Starbucks orders
Ant’s work on payment standards is arriving as its former parent company’s Alipay platform begins putting AI-assisted purchasing tools in front of consumers.
Ant International separated from Hangzhou-based Ant Group nearly three years ago. Ant Group operates Alipay, the mobile payment service widely used in mainland China.
Alipay said Wednesday that users can now create recurring Starbucks requests through one of its AI features.
A customer can instruct the app to “buy me a Starbucks iced Americano at 10 a.m. every day,” according to the announcement. The system can then place the requested order at the scheduled time before asking the customer to complete payment.
The arrangement keeps the payment approval with the user even though the AI feature handles the recurring order.
Alipay users can make recurring ride-hailing requests from Didi through the same AI tool, extending the automated system from retail purchases to transportation services.
Be the first to comment