Visa, Mastercard and Ant International have announced a joint initiative to develop common standards for identifying and verifying AI agents that make purchases for users. Reuters reported that the effort is aimed at creating an interoperable trust framework as agentic commerce moves from demonstrations toward real transactions.
The logic resembles identity and risk controls already used in payments, but the actor being verified is software rather than only a human customer or merchant. A common framework could reduce the need for merchants, networks and agent providers to build separate identification systems for every platform, while still allowing individual payment networks to make their own approval and fraud decisions.
The initiative is industry-led, not a global regulation. That distinction matters because common technical standards do not themselves settle consumer liability, data rights or regulatory responsibility. Those questions will still depend on laws, regulators and contractual arrangements in each jurisdiction.