What is the Know-Your-Agent interoperability framework?

It is a collaboration announced on 9 to 10 September 2026 by Ant International, Mastercard and Visa to develop shared approaches for verifying, onboarding and monitoring AI agents across payment networks. The stated aim is that card networks, digital wallet ecosystems, agent platforms and marketplaces can recognise a trusted agent without each running its own separate identity check. Each network retains its own verification and decisioning processes.

What does the framework actually cover?

Three areas of work are named in the announcement. First, cross-network operator traceability, linking each AI agent to a validated operator, cardholder or business. Second, shared certification, assessing agents against common security and behavioural requirements. Third, continuous monitoring of agents using identity and transaction signals.

Is this a technical standard?

Not yet. The announcement describes an intent to explore ways to work toward common principles. No technical specifications, governance body or rollout timeline were disclosed. The three companies each keep their existing protocols: Visa's Trusted Agent Protocol, Mastercard Verifiable Intent and Ant International's Agentic Mobile Protocol.

Where is the work being done?

Through BuildFin.ai, an industry platform convened by the Monetary Authority of Singapore that brings together financial institutions, technology providers and researchers. The announcement says the collaboration builds on the regulator's Safeguards for Agentic Finance at Runtime (SAFR) framework and covers payment ecosystems in Singapore.

Why does agent identity matter for agentic commerce?

A merchant asked to accept a transaction initiated by an AI agent needs to know which agent it is, who operates it, what it was permitted to do and who is accountable if it goes wrong. Without that, agent-initiated transactions look like unattributed automated traffic. Identity is therefore a prerequisite for the liability and dispute rules that let agent commerce move beyond pilots.

Ant International, Mastercard and Visa Begin Work on Know-Your-Agent Interoperability

Ant International, Mastercard and Visa have begun a collaboration on a Know-Your-Agent (KYA) interoperability framework, announced on 9 September 2026 US time and reported on 10 September. The goal is that an AI agent verified on one payment network can be recognised across others, so that card networks, digital wallet ecosystems, agent platforms and marketplaces do not each have to run a separate onboarding and identity check for the same agent. Each network keeps its own verification and decisioning. At this stage the announcement is a statement of intent: no technical specification, governance body or rollout timeline has been published.

Editor’s note: this page is built from the Business Wire announcement as quoted and linked by PYMNTS, The Next Web and Forkast, plus CNBC’s reporting of an interview with Ant International. The release was not retrieved directly during drafting, so quoted wording is reported as those outlets render it. Scope, participants and timing should be re-checked against the companies’ own materials.

What was announced

The three companies said they are initiating work toward common approaches for AI agent verification, accountability and risk management across payment ecosystems. Three areas of work are named:

Work area	What it means
Cross-network operator traceability	Linking each AI agent back to a validated operator, cardholder or business, so an agent’s actions can be attributed to an accountable party.
Shared certification	Assessing agents against common security and behavioural requirements, rather than each network running its own bar.
Continuous monitoring	Ongoing assessment of an agent using identity and transaction signals, not a one-off check at onboarding.

Ant International’s chief innovation officer Jiang-Ming Yang gave CNBC the plainest version of the objective: if an agent registers with Ant, it should not need to register again with Visa or Mastercard.

Mastercard’s chief digital officer Pablo Fourez is quoted in the announcement saying that interoperability across Know-Your-Agent frameworks is essential to making agentic commerce work at scale. Visa’s Rubail Birwadker, global head of growth products and strategic partnerships, is quoted saying that as AI agents become a bigger part of how people discover and buy, trust must scale with them.

Three protocols, one problem

Each of the three companies already runs its own agent-trust protocol:

Visa Trusted Agent Protocol (TAP), published on GitHub, covering how agents are authenticated and authorised at the transaction level.
Mastercard Verifiable Intent, an open standard for verifying that an agent’s action reflects the user’s intent.
Ant International Agentic Mobile Protocol (AMP), connected to the Alipay+ wallet ecosystem.

That is the problem the collaboration is aimed at. An agent operator facing three separate registration and certification regimes, and a merchant facing three separate trust signals, is the friction that keeps agent-initiated transactions in pilot territory. The announcement says the companies will now “explore ways to work toward common principles”, which is a lower bar than converging the protocols.

Where the work sits

The collaboration runs through BuildFin.ai, an industry platform convened by the Monetary Authority of Singapore that brings together financial institutions, technology providers and researchers to develop AI solutions for financial services. The announcement says the work builds on MAS’s Safeguards for Agentic Finance at Runtime (SAFR) framework and covers payment ecosystems in Singapore.

That scoping matters for anyone reading this as a global standards move. The participants are global, but the announced venue and initial scope are Singaporean, and the regulator’s framework is the reference point. Whether the output travels to US and European ecosystems is not addressed in the announcement.

Why it matters

Agent identity is the layer beneath everything else in agentic commerce. Protocols such as ACP, UCP and AP2 define how an agent discovers a product, builds a cart and carries a mandate to pay. None of that resolves the merchant’s first question, which is who this agent is, who operates it, what it was permitted to do, and who carries the loss when it goes wrong. Until that question has a portable answer, agent traffic is hard to distinguish from unattributed automation, and merchants default to blocking or to manual review.

This is also the second network-level move in a week. On 9 September Mastercard announced Agent Connect, positioning itself at the merchant-to-agent integration point. The KYA collaboration addresses the layer below that: whether the agent arriving at that integration point can be trusted at all.

The announcement cites a McKinsey projection that AI agents could orchestrate US$3 trillion to US$5 trillion of global consumer commerce by 2030. That figure is a projection made by a consultancy and quoted in a press release, not a measured market, and should be read accordingly.

What to watch

Whether a specification appears. Common principles without published requirements does not change anything a merchant or agent operator can build against.
Governance. Three commercial competitors aligning on identity raises the question of who decides what counts as a certified agent, and whether the framework stays open or becomes a gate that favours incumbents.
Geographic scope. The named venue is Singapore. Movement into US and European ecosystems, or alignment with the EMVCo agentic payments work and the UK’s Know Your Agent proposals, would be the signal that this is more than a regional pilot.
Who else joins. American Express, the account-to-account rails and the agent platforms themselves are absent from this announcement.