Ant International signed Visa and Mastercard to work on a shared standard for payments made by AI agents. The three will build common ways to verify an agent, link it to a real entity and watch its behaviour. Ant says an agent registered with one network would not need to register again with the others. Each of the three launched its own separate agent payment protocol in the past year. Ant's chief innovation officer cited the risk of agents inventing false information as a reason for the safeguards. Mastercard's chief digital officer called cross-network recognition essential for merchants and processors. The commerce forecast comes from McKinsey. Separately, Alipay users can now schedule recurring Starbucks orders through an AI feature.
What changed
Visa, Mastercard and Ant International each ran separate agent payment protocols.
What it unlocks
An AI agent registered once could be recognised across all three payment networks.
- $3-5 trillion agent commerce by 2030
- 50+ e-wallets on Alipay+
- 56% of global e-commerce value digital wallets
What you need to act on it
- standards still being developed
Sources