MasterCard and Visa cards are seen in this illustration photo taken in Krakow, Poland on March 29, 2024.<\/p>\n
Nurphoto | Nurphoto | Getty Images<\/p>\n
Fintech company Ant International announced Thursday it has signed on Visa<\/a> and Mastercard<\/a> to collaborate on a new standard for payments made via AI agents, in a bet that they will be used more and more by consumers and businesses.<\/p>\n In a statement, the companies cited McKinsey projections expecting AI agents will handle $3 trillion to $5 trillion of global consumer commerce by 2030<\/a>. But Jiang-Ming Yang, chief innovation officer of Ant International, told CNBC that AI agents’ potential for hallucination meant “we need to make sure people feel safe.”<\/p>\n “Trust is the foundation of the AI transformation,” Yang told CNBC in an interview.<\/p>\n Building trust in AI payments<\/p>\n The new collaboration will focus on how the payment companies can “know your agent,” Ant said in the announcement, which includes building common standards that link each agent to a valid entity, assess each agent’s behavior and monitor them.<\/p>\n It’s an effort to increase interoperability for users of the different systems.<\/p>\n “If [an] agent registers with Ant, they don’t need to register again with Visa, Mastercard,” Yang said.<\/p>\n In the past 12 months, Visa<\/a>, Mastercard<\/a> and Ant International<\/a> have each announced their own systems, known as protocols, for AI agents to complete payments securely.<\/p>\n While U.S. credit card giants Visa and Mastercard dominate transactions in developed economies, many developing economies tend to use electronic payment systems known as e-wallets. More than 50 of these e-wallets have partnered with Ant International, which runs an “Alipay+” system.<\/p>\n