EMVCo’s Effort to Reinforce Trust in Card-Based Agentic Commerce – Digital Transactions

The payments industry’s embrace of agentic commerce took a step forward early Tuesday with an announcement from EMVCo that the standards body has developed a framework for “secure, interoperable, and scalable” agentic transactions using cards.

The framework is by no means a final set of rules, but is intended as “a foundation for further industry engagement and potential specification development,” says EMVCo, which is inviting feedback “from all interested stakeholders” by Sept. 30. The draft the group has developed is called “EMV Agentic Payments—Framework for Specifications.”

EMVCo’s focus is on situations in which “intent needs to be managed over time,” the organization says, citing examples such as recurring purchases. Such transactions, it says, “may require access to a shared intent ‘state’ that persist across multiple participants and their interactions.” The organization says it has found a way to add what it calls “a common coordination point” to the cryptographic assurance stemming from technology already in the market. The combination, EMVCo says, could help payments platforms “consistently interpret consumer-authorized intent.”

In agentic transactions, bits of code shop and pay online, following instructions from human shoppers. To help determine shoppers’ intent and guard against rogue agents, the group’s framework, formally called “EMV Agentic Payments—Framework for Specifications,” sets out a technical layer that lets participants manage consumer intent in a transaction.

“Card-based agentic payments require a globally interoperable foundation that consumers, merchants, and issuers can all trust,” says Junya Tanaka, executive committee chair at EMVCo, in a statement.

The organization has also set up what it calls an Agentic Payment Task Force and says it is working closely with other rule bodies, including the FIDO Alliance, the OpenID Foundation, and the OpenWallet Foundation. Future developments may include such features as Know Your Agent and Agentic Transaction Indicators, EMVCo says.

EMVCo’s standards effort comes as at least some payments players express concerns about the potential for rogue agents, and are looking for methods to enforce spending controls while guarding against unauthorized transactions.

Agentic commerce “is a trend I have real concerns about,” says Cliff Gray, founder at Lakeland Scientific, in an email message. “At the core of agentic commerce, is the idea that a software agent will be given the authority to make purchases on your behalf. Software spending your money. Ask me how many ways that can go wrong. I’m hardly a Luddite, but I believe the idea of relinquishing purchasing authority to an artificial intelligence deserves tremendous caution. Let’s hope EMVCo exercises and ensures just that.”

Other observers applaud EMVCo’s effort but caution that the process will be slow. “ It’s good to see the payments industry—EMVCo and other private sector organizations representing it—stepping up to develop rules to enable safe agentic payments at scale,” notes Eric Grover, principal at Intrepid Ventures, a payments consultancy, in an email message. “Reaching technical consensus across competing payment networks—while simultaneously collaborating with external bodies like the FIDO Alliance, W3C, and OpenID Foundation—is notoriously slow and highly political.”

Based in Mountain View, Calif., EMVCo has developed standards over the years for the EMV chips embedded in cards. Europay, Mastercard, and Visa began the effort in the late 1990s, with JCB, American Express, China UnionPay, and Discover joining later.