- EMVCo released a draft framework for card-based agentic payments designed to promote secure, interoperable, and scalable transactions involving AI agents.
- The framework introduces Intent Services, a shared layer that would help payment participants register, retrieve, reference, and update consumer-authorized intent as it changes over time.
- EMVCo is exploring additional agentic payment capabilities, including Know Your Agent (KYA) and Agentic Transaction Indicators, while seeking industry feedback on the draft through September 30.
Global technical organization EMVCo released the draft of a new framework to help promote secure, interoperable and scalable agentic payments.
Much of the conversation around agentic commerce has centered around the liability that occurs when an AI agent makes a purchase on the consumer’s behalf. EMVCo has discovered that, in agentic payment scenarios where intent needs to be managed over time, such as recurring purchases, cumulative budgets, and post-transaction activities, users may need to offer access to a shared intent “state,” which means multiple participants in a transaction may need a consistent way to determine what the consumer authorized, whether that authorization is still valid, and how much of it has already been used.
To address this, EMVCo’s proposed framework introduces “Intent Services,” a shared layer that would allow payment participants to register, retrieve, reference, and update consumer-authorized intent before, during, and after a transaction.
The framework is designed to complement, rather than replace, existing approaches to proving consumer intent. While cryptographic solutions such as Verifiable Intent can provide assurance that a consumer authorized an agent to act, EMVCo’s Intent Services would provide a common coordination point for participants to interpret and manage that authorization as it evolves over time. The framework outlines ecosystem roles and data fields for registering intent, maintaining lifecycle and state information, and allowing authorized parties to retrieve intent-related data.
“Card-based agentic payments require a globally interoperable foundation that consumers, merchants and issuers can all trust,” said EMVCo Executive Committee Chair Junya Tanaka. “This publication marks an important step forward by outlining a consistent approach for establishing and communicating intent alongside payment-related information, and we encourage participants from across the industry to share their feedback to shape its ongoing development.”
EMVCo has a dedicated Agentic Payments Task Force and is actively engaging with stakeholders, including EMVCo Associates and Subscribers. The organization is also collaborating closely with other industry partners such as the FIDO Alliance, the OpenID Foundation, the OpenWallet Foundation, and W3C.
EMVCo anticipates that creating a common foundation for card-based agentic payments will help identify potential future enhancements to other EMV technologies such as EMV 3-D Secure (3DS), EMV Payment Tokenization, EMV Secure Remote Commerce (SRC), and the EMV Digital Payment Credential (DPC).
EMVCo is also considering capabilities related to Know Your Agent (KYA) and Agentic Transaction Indicators for future publications. These capabilities could help payment participants identify the agent involved in a transaction, communicate relevant attributes about that agent, and signal when a transaction involves an agent acting on a consumer’s behalf.
Anyone interested in providing feedback to EMVCo’s draft framework can leave their comments on the proposed framework by Wednesday, September 30.
Photo by Ant Rozetsky on Unsplash
