Ant International, Visa, and Mastercard plan a new standard for payments made via AI agents, citing McKinsey's projection of $3T to $5T in commerce by 2030 (Evelyn Cheng/CNBC)

Ant International, Visa, and Mastercard are collaborating on a new standard for payments made via AI agents. The initiative aims to develop common standards to identify and verify AI agents that can make purchases on behalf of users. According to the companies, this comes as the payments industry prepares for the growth of agentic global consumer commerce, where AI agents evolve from making recommendations to completing purchases.

The framework, called Know-Your-Agent interoperability, would allow card networks, digital wallets, agent platforms, and online marketplaces to recognize trusted AI agents across different payment ecosystems while maintaining their own approval and risk-management processes. This builds on existing protocols, including Visa's Trusted Agent Protocol, Mastercard Verifiable Intent, and Ant International's Agentic Mobile Protocol.

The companies, citing a McKinsey projection, say that agentic commerce could reach $3T to $5T by 2030. The initiative could help reduce integration costs and accelerate the launch of new agentic services by providing greater trust and risk visibility across participating networks. The collaboration will take place through BuildFin.ai, a platform convened by the Monetary Authority of Singapore.

Brief written by urgent.news from Techmeme, Straits Times Business, Business Recorder, Tech in Asia, Investing.com — 5 reports on this story. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.