Agentic Payments Series, Part 5: Know Your Agent and Transaction Indicators

Know Your Agent (KYA) is about being able to consistently identify an agent and link it to stable information about it. The framework lists concepts that future work may cover:

• Stable agent identifiers that work across participants
• Agent version or model identification
• Agent registries or registry references
• Baseline registration or verification criteria
• Which parties may see agent information, and when
• Ways to pass agent information through payment flows
• Agent lifecycle events such as updates, suspension or expiry

The framework suggests such information could support risk and fraud checks, audit, dispute handling and accountability. It is equally clear about what it does not define: registry governance, accreditation or trust scoring, identifier formats, liability, or rules on when KYA information must be collected or checked. Different participants may evaluate the same agent information differently.

Agentic transaction indicators

Today's payment messages generally assume the cardholder took part directly. Indicators would let a transaction carry a signal that an agent initiated, facilitated or executed it.

The framework does not define any indicator. It states that such indicators may be needed within EMV technologies and that any change would go through each specification's own governance.

It also notes that the need may extend beyond EMVCo. It lists message standards where indicators could be relevant:

• ISO 8583, used for card authorisation and interchange
• ISO 20022, used across payments and financial messaging
• SWIFT and other ISO 20022-based cross-border environments
• Potentially NACHA ACH, where ISO 20022 mappings are increasingly relevant

EMVCo says it intends to share a payments-industry perspective with the relevant standards bodies.

Links to existing EMV technologies

The framework does not change any existing EMV specification. It describes how intent information could in future be referenced or carried by:

Any such enhancements would follow EMVCo's usual specification processes.