Ant International is working with Visa and Mastercard to create shared standards for identifying, verifying and monitoring artificial intelligence agents involved in payments, as autonomous software takes on a greater role in global commerce.
The companies plan to develop an interoperable “Know Your Agent” framework. It would allow merchants and payment providers to establish which AI agent is initiating a transaction, which organisation or individual it represents, and whether it has permission to act.
An agent that has completed identity checks with one participating payment provider would not necessarily have to repeat the process with another.
The initiative comes as payment companies prepare for AI systems capable of searching for products, creating orders and completing payments on behalf of consumers and businesses. McKinsey estimates 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 stronger safeguards would be required as AI systems receive greater control over financial transactions. He warned that agents could provide inaccurate information or take actions a user had not intended.
“Trust is the foundation of the AI transformation,” Yang told CNBC.
The proposed framework would include common methods for connecting an AI agent to a legitimate entity, assessing its behaviour and tracking its activity. Mastercard chief digital officer Pablo Fourez said compatibility between different Know Your Agent systems would be essential if agentic commerce was to work across multiple platforms.
Payment networks develop their own AI systems
The three companies have each spent the past year developing technology for AI-enabled payments.
Mastercard launched Agent Connect on Wednesday, providing merchants with one integration for product discovery, cart creation and customer-approved payments across AI shopping platforms. The service works with Mastercard Agent Pay, which uses tokenised permissions to record a customer’s authority when an AI system is allowed to make a purchase.
Those permissions enable merchants and payment providers to check whether a transaction complies with the customer’s instructions.
Visa introduced Intelligent Commerce Connect in April. Its infrastructure combines payment initiation, tokenisation, authentication and spending controls, allowing agents to find products and complete purchases through Visa’s existing payment network and security tools.
In June, Visa added new AI and stablecoin capabilities and partnered with OpenAI to support payments in agentic commerce experiences. Its stablecoin settlement activity had reached a $7 billion annualised run rate at the time, according to a previous report by crypto.news.
Mastercard unveiled Agent Pay for Machines in June with backing from more than 30 payment, blockchain and technology companies, including Ripple, Coinbase, Stripe, Adyen and the Solana Foundation. It is designed for transactions initiated by autonomous software, including high-volume and low-value payments.
Users can set spending limits, approval requirements and settlement conditions. Transactions can be processed through traditional payment networks or stablecoin rails, reflecting a wider shift towards payments in which the buyer may not directly visit a merchant’s checkout page.
Alipay trials recurring AI purchases
Ant International brings access to Alipay+, its cross-border payments and digitalisation platform. The company says more than 50 electronic wallets have joined Alipay+.
Digital wallets accounted for 56% of global e-commerce transaction value and 33% of point-of-sale value in 2025, according to Worldpay data cited by the companies. Spending through digital wallets exceeded $13 trillion.
Visa has also been testing AI payments alongside blockchain settlement. Wirex joined Visa’s Agentic Ready programme in June to trial AI agents making stablecoin payments for software subscriptions, marketing expenditure and procurement. The tests aim to assess how autonomous software can initiate transactions while preserving security controls and user authority.
Visa and Artemis said in July that stablecoins could be suitable for low-value machine-to-machine payments, while traditional cards could continue to process consumer purchases.
Alipay, operated by Ant Group, said on Wednesday that users could schedule recurring Starbucks orders through one of its AI tools. A customer can ask the app to “buy me a Starbucks iced Americano at 10 a.m. every day”. The system places the order at the scheduled time, but the customer still completes the payment.
The same tool can arrange recurring ride-hailing requests from Didi.
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.
