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Fintech company Ant International announced Thursday it has signed on Visa and Mastercard to collaborate on a new standard for payments made via AI agents. This collaboration aims to address concerns about AI agents' potential for hallucination and ensure users feel safe. The companies cited McKinsey projections expecting AI agents to handle $3 trillion to $5 trillion of global consumer commerce by 2030.
Jiang-Ming Yang, chief innovation officer of Ant International, emphasized that 'Trust is the foundation of the AI transformation.' The new collaboration will focus on creating common standards that link each AI agent to a valid entity, assess its behavior, and monitor it to increase interoperability for users across different systems. Yang noted that if an agent registers with Ant, it doesn't need to register again with Visa or Mastercard.
In the past 12 months, Visa, Mastercard, and Ant International have each introduced their own protocols for secure AI agent payments. While Visa and Mastercard dominate transactions in developed economies, many developing economies use electronic payment systems known as e-wallets. Over 50 e-wallets have partnered with Ant International, which operates the 'Alipay Plus' app. These digital wallets are increasingly linking to credit cards, becoming a more common payment method than physical cards.
Digital wallets accounted for 56% of global e-commerce value and 33% of point-of-sale value in 2025, totaling over $13 trillion in spending, according to Worldpay. The technology now needs to develop securely for AI-driven spending. Pablo Fourez, chief digital officer at Mastercard, stressed the need for interoperability across 'Know-Your-Agent' frameworks to enable scalable agentic commerce.
Ant International separated from Hangzhou-based Ant Group, which runs the Alipay mobile payments app in mainland China. Alipay recently announced users can set recurring requests to place Starbucks orders via AI features, such as ordering an iced Americano at 10 a.m. daily, prompting payment. Users can also make recurring ride-hailing requests via Didi using the same AI tool.
Source: CNBC
