Visa has introduced the Trusted Agent Protocol, an ecosystem-led framework designed to bring security and trust to the rapidly growing world of AI commerce. This new protocol aims to allow consumers to safely use AI agents to search, compare, and pay on their behalf, a necessity given a recent 4,700% surge in AI-driven traffic to U.S. retail sites.
The protocol, which was developed in collaboration with Cloudflare, establishes a secure line of communication between AI agents and merchants throughout the transaction process. It is now available via the Visa Developer Center and GitHub.
As AI agents increasingly shop and buy for consumers, merchants face new challenges:
- Existing bot detection systems can mistakenly block legitimate agent-driven purchases.
- Merchants struggle to support both guest and logged-in checkouts initiated by an agent.
- It becomes harder to identify the actual consumer behind the AI agent and the payment data.
Visa’s Trusted Agent Protocol directly addresses these issues by enabling approved, trusted agents to securely pass critical information to merchants. This helps merchants distinguish legitimate buying agents from malicious automation and rogue bots.
The new specifications provide a much-needed framework for recognizing trusted agents and verifying their credentials without forcing merchants to overhaul their existing systems. The protocol uses agent-specific cryptographic signatures to convey essential information, including:
- Agent Intent: An explicit signal that the agent is trusted and intends to purchase a product.
- Consumer Recognition: Data indicating whether the consumer is an existing customer or has a prior relationship with the merchant.
- Payment Information: The option for agents to carry payment data to facilitate the merchant’s preferred checkout method.
“We believe the entire payments ecosystem has a responsibility to ensure sellers can trust AI agents as much as they trust their best customers and networks,” said Jack Forestell, Chief Product & Strategy Officer at Visa. The protocol is built on the foundational HTTP Message Signature standard and aligns with existing web infrastructure, requiring minimal changes to merchant websites.
Visa has received feedback from major early partners across the payments and commerce landscape, including Adyen, Cloudflare, Coinbase, Microsoft, Shopify, Stripe, and many others. While the initial specifications apply to the Visa network, the company is committed to an open approach, working with global standards bodies like IETF and EMVCo to ensure interoperability and a seamless future for agentic commerce.