In the first of a dedicated EMV® Insights series, Clinton Allen, Chair of the EMVCo Agentic Payments Task Force, explains how EMVCo is supporting the development of card-based agentic payment solutions and the approach it is taking to promote global trust and interoperability.
EMVCo developed global specifications that enable seamless and secure card-based payments for billions of consumers and businesses worldwide. In-store and online, EMV Specifications have helped ensure that card payments are trusted and just work.
Growing adoption of agentic payments signals the next era of global commerce is fast approaching. As with any card-based payment, the criteria for success remain unchanged for agentic payments. It must be trusted and reliable.
EMVCo’s proven specification delivery model can help make this happen. This is why a dedicated Agentic Payments Task Force has been established to support innovation in card-based agentic payment solutions by increasing trust and interoperability across the ecosystem.
As a first step on the journey, EMVCo has released a draft framework that provides a common foundation for further industry engagement and potential specification development. All interested stakeholders are encouraged to provide their feedback on EMV® Agentic Payments – Framework for Specifications by Wednesday 30 September.
How is EMVCo approaching agentic payments?
In line with EMVCo’s focus on card-based payments, our work in the agentic space centres on use-cases where consumers delegate authority to AI agents to use card payments for making purchases on their behalf.
In these scenarios, established consumer-merchant interaction and trust models are being redefined and the assumptions that inform ‘traditional’ commerce do not necessarily apply. For example, in certain agentic use-cases, the consumer may instruct an agent to make a purchase within set limits and may not be present when the payment is actually executed.
A key focus across the agentic commerce ecosystem, therefore, is how to reliably establish intent and determine that a consumer delegated authority to an AI agent to make a purchase on their behalf.
Following industry input, EMVCo has focused on card-based agentic payment scenarios where intent needs to be managed over time, such as recurring purchases, cumulative budgets and post-transaction activities. These scenarios may require access to a shared intent ‘state’ that persists across multiple participants and their interactions.
EMVCo has identified an opportunity to complement cryptographic assurance provided by existing industry solutions, such as Verifiable Intent, with a common coordination point that can help participants consistently interpret consumer-authorised intent.
The draft EMV® Agentic Payments – Framework for Specifications introduces the concept of ‘Intent Services’. Intent Services provide a shared, interoperable layer that enables payment participants to register, reference, retrieve and manage consumer-authorised intent before, during and after a transaction. The framework provides an overview of ecosystem roles and data fields for registering intent, maintaining lifecycle and state information, and enabling the authorised retrieval of intent-related data.
How else is EMVCo working to support agentic payments?
By providing a common foundation for card-based agentic payments, the framework will help identify potential future enhancements to other EMV technologies – including EMV 3-D Secure (3DS), EMV Payment Tokenisation, EMV Secure Remote Commerce (SRC) and the EMV Digital Payment Credential (DPC). It will also inform opportunities to complement existing and emerging identity and credential standards.
Looking ahead, additional work may be required to help enable the consistent identification of agentic transactions across the payments ecosystem. To support this, EMVCo may consider capabilities related to Know Your Agent (KYA) and Agentic Transaction Indicators. Together, these could help provide interoperable mechanisms for identifying the agent involved in a payment interaction, communicating relevant agent attributes, and signalling that a transaction involved an agent acting on behalf of a consumer.
How is EMVCo collaborating with the wider industry on agentic payments?
The agentic payments ecosystem is complex, comprising various existing and emerging industry standards and protocols. This poses the risk of fragmentation.
For this reason, EMVCo has engaged with other technical bodies, industry groups and ecosystem participants to identify opportunities for globally interoperable specifications and frameworks that address specific challenges related to card-based payments, while complementing other standards and protocols. The same philosophy informs the development of technologies like EMV 3DS, EMV Payment Tokenisation, EMV SRC and EMV DPC, which integrate with other industry standards.
Given the need for ecosystem-wide interoperability, strategic and technical input from EMVCo’s Associate community – which includes leading agentic participants – has been integral to shaping the direction of our work to date. So too has our collaboration with industry partners such as the FIDO Alliance, the OpenID Foundation, the OpenWallet Foundation and W3C.
As the work to enable card-based agentic payments that consumers, merchants and issuers can all trust moves forward, all interested stakeholders are encouraged to explore ways to participate in EMVCo and share feedback.
