Ant International, Visa, and Mastercard develop AI payment standard

Ant International has partnered with Visa and Mastercard to create a common standard for payments made by AI agents. The companies said the effort is aimed at making AIdriven commerce more secure and easier to use across different payment systems. The collaboration will focus on verifying that AI agents are linked to real entities, checking their behavior, and improving interoperability. Ant International said the goal is to let an agent registered with one network work without reregistering on another. The companies pointed to forecasts that AI agents could handle trillions of dollars in consumer commerce by 2030, but also said safeguards are needed because AI systems can make mistakes. The announcement comes as payment firms, wallets, and digital commerce platforms race to build protocols for agentic payments.