What is Know Your Agent (KYA)?

Know Your Agent is an emerging trust layer for agentic commerce. The September 2026 interoperability effort announced by Ant International, Mastercard and Visa focuses on linking an agent to a validated operator, recognizing shared certification signals and monitoring transactions while each network keeps its own approval and risk decisions.

Is KYA the same as an agent wallet or x402?

No. KYA addresses who or what the agent is, who operates it and whether its authority can be trusted. A wallet controls credentials and spending authority. A payment rail such as x402 describes how a machine-readable payment is requested and settled. These layers can work together but solve different problems.

Is there one universal KYA standard?

Not yet. Visa, Mastercard and Ant International said on 10 September 2026 that they had begun collaborating on interoperable principles. The initiative builds on separate existing approaches and preserves each network's own verification and decisioning processes.

Editorial

Research brief · agent identity

Know Your Agent is becoming a missing trust layer in agentic commerce.

On 10 September 2026, Ant International, Mastercard and Visa said they had begun work on an interoperable Know-Your-Agent framework so card networks, wallets, agent platforms and marketplaces can recognize trusted AI agents across payment ecosystems. The important distinction: KYA is not a wallet and it is not a payment rail. It is about identity, delegated authority and accountability around the transaction.

Published 10 September 2026 · sources listed below

10 Sep 2026

Ant International, Mastercard and Visa announce KYA interoperability work

3 focus areas

Operator traceability, shared certification and continuous transaction monitoring

Not one rail

KYA can sit above cards, wallets and machine-payment protocols

What KYA is trying to solve

A merchant needs more than a valid payment credential

When software can discover a product and complete a purchase, the counterparty needs to know whether it is dealing with a recognized agent, which person or organization operates that agent, and whether the action is consistent with delegated authority. A successful card authorization or stablecoin transfer does not answer all of those questions by itself.

The new collaboration is therefore centered on shared trust signals rather than a single global gatekeeper. The participants say each network will continue making its own approval and risk decisions while exploring common principles that can reduce duplicate onboarding and verification work.

The announced focus areas are cross-network operator traceability, shared certification requirements and continuous transaction monitoring. In practical terms, identity is being treated as an ongoing risk signal, not just a registration form completed once.

KYA vs wallet vs payment rail

Six questions an autonomous transaction has to answer

Layer	Question	Typical evidence
Discovery	What can this service or agent do?	agent.json, MCP/A2A metadata, OpenAPI, directories
Identity / KYA	Which agent is acting, for whom, and can that relationship be trusted?	operator traceability, certification, risk signals
Intent	What exactly did the user or business authorize?	mandates, limits, verifiable intent
Wallet / credentials	What can the agent spend or sign?	tokenized credentials, keys, policy, caps
Payment rail	How is value requested and settled?	x402, card rails, other machine-payment protocols
Delivery / audit	Did the paid action succeed and can it be reconciled?	receipts, result schemas, settlement evidence

Why this matters beyond cards

India is separately exploring an AI-agent registry for payments

Reuters also reported on 10 September that India's National Payments Corporation is developing a registry to monitor and verify AI agents transacting on UPI as part of plans for a Unified Agentic Protocol. That effort is separate from the Visa–Mastercard–Ant collaboration, but it points at the same architectural pressure: payment systems need a reliable way to identify software actors and connect them to accountable operators.

For builders, that means agent identity should not be bolted on after payment. Machine-readable capability discovery, bounded authority, identity evidence, payment terms and delivery receipts increasingly need to be designed together.

What KYA does not mean

Not a finished universal standard

The September 10 announcement is an interoperability collaboration. The networks still preserve their own verification and decisioning.

Not KYC with a new acronym

KYC identifies a customer or legal entity. KYA adds the software actor, its operator, delegated authority and behavioral/transaction signals around automated action.

Not a replacement for wallet policy

A trusted agent can still be over-permissioned. Spending caps, approved counterparties, credential isolation and kill switches remain necessary.

Not a replacement for payment semantics

Identity does not tell a machine the price, asset, network, challenge format or how to retry a paid request. Payment protocols still have that job.

Agent wallet explainer Agent engine optimization Find x402 APIs zFinia agent manifest Machine API