The way consumers and businesses make payments could change significantly as AI agents take on more tasks. Ant International has partnered with Visa and Mastercard to develop a common standard for payments made through AI agents.
The companies cited McKinsey projections that AI agents could handle $3 trillion to $5 trillion of global consumer commerce by 2030.
Jiang-Ming Yang, chief innovation officer of Ant International, said AI agents can create risks because of their potential to hallucinate, making trust a key requirement for wider adoption.
“Trust is the foundation of the AI transformation,” Yang said.
The collaboration will focus on developing “know your agent” standards. These will connect each AI agent to a valid entity, assess its behaviour and enable ongoing monitoring.
The initiative is also aimed at improving interoperability between different payment systems. “If [an] agent registers with Ant, they don’t need to register again with Visa, Mastercard,” Yang said.
Over the past 12 months, Visa, Mastercard and Ant International have each introduced their own protocols designed to help AI agents complete payments securely. The new collaboration aims to create greater compatibility between these systems.
While Visa and Mastercard have a strong presence in developed economies, e-wallets are widely used across developing markets. More than 50 e-wallets have partnered with Ant International through its Alipay+ system.
Digital wallets are also increasingly connected to credit cards and are becoming a common payment method. According to Worldpay, digital wallets accounted for 56% of global e-commerce value and 33% of point-of-sale value in 2025, representing more than $13 trillion in spending.
As AI agents become involved in consumer spending, payment systems will need to ensure these transactions can be carried out securely.
“Interoperability across Know-Your-Agent frameworks is essential to making agentic commerce work at scale,” said Pablo Fourez, chief digital officer at Mastercard. He highlighted the need for merchants and payment processors to have a consistent way to identify which AI agents can be trusted.
Ant International separated from Ant Group nearly 3 years ago. Ant Group operates the Alipay mobile payments app in mainland China.
Alipay has also begun expanding AI-driven purchasing features. Users can instruct its AI tool to “buy me a Starbucks iced Americano at 10 a.m. every day,” after which the app can place the order at the specified time and prompt the user to complete the payment.
The same AI tool currently supports recurring ride-hailing requests from Didi.
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