On September 10, Visa, Mastercard, and Ant International announced they're joining forces to create shared rules for vetting AI agents that make purchases on behalf of users. The initiative, called Know Your Agent (KYA), aims to standardize requirements for these bots as they connect to different payment networks.

Inside the Know Your Agent Initiative

With KYA, the companies want to set common guidelines for identifying and assessing AI agents that initiate transactions for customers. The goal is to get everyone on the same page about what’s expected, making it easier for bots to plug into multiple payment ecosystems without jumping through new hoops every time.

What the Principles Cover

The new framework will clarify who's responsible for a bot’s actions, how its security is evaluated, and how ongoing monitoring of its transactions should work. This checklist should help payment networks and partners quickly figure out who they're dealing with and what basic checks have already been done.

Why They're Doing It

The main goal is to cut down on duplicate compliance checks every time an AI agent connects to a new payment network. By setting a single set of standards, KYA should make it simpler to scale AI-powered solutions across different infrastructures—so the same agent can work seamlessly in more than one place.