Summary
A coalition of payment and technology firms, including Mastercard, Visa, Fiserv, Circle, Remitly and others, formed the Agentic Payments Alliance (APA) to standardize the emerging infrastructure for agentic commerce — AI agents making payments autonomously. The APA acts as an "EMV equivalent" to ease communication between AI programs and the market of AI protocols emerging. It starts with about two dozen members and is recruiting more.
Key Facts
- Agentic Payments Alliance (APA) formed by Rain, Visa, Mastercard, Fiserv, Circle, Remitly and others
- ~24 founding members: Avalanche, Basis Theory, Chainalysis, Circle, Coinflow, Crossmint, delta Network, Episode Six, Evertec, Fireblocks, Fiserv, Kala, Lithic, Mastercard, Monad, PayOS, Rain, Remitly, Rialo by Subzero Labs, Sardine, Shift4, Solana, Turnkey, Uniswap Labs, Visa, Yuno
- Acts as an "EMV equivalent" to ease communication between AI programs and AI protocols
- First initiatives: shared research and tests for AI agent identification and authorization
- Will develop group advocacy for regulatory issues tied to agentic commerce
- Rain's technology lets businesses launch payment cards funded by users' stablecoin deposits
- Rain will contribute its Agentic Startup Program (accelerator) to APA members
- Mastercard EVP Sherri Haymond: "The risk in a moment like this is not that the industry moves too slowly — it's that innovation outpaces alignment"
- McKinsey projects $3 trillion to $5 trillion in global agentic commerce by 2030
- Darwinium research: 48% of banks allow AI transactions by default, relying on after-the-fact monitoring; 31% proactively block unless explicitly allowed
- Visa recently acquired Biocatch (behavioral biometrics) amid AI fraud concerns
- Celent's Zil Bareisis: standards must converge to achieve scale; interoperability is critical
Why It Matters
The Agentic Payments Alliance is a significant effort to standardize how AI agents get authorized, how fraud is caught, and how loyalty/rewards work in agentic commerce — before those decisions get made in isolation. With McKinsey projecting $3-5 trillion in agentic commerce by 2030, the alliance aims to create the interoperability and trust needed for AI agents to transact at scale. It mirrors how EMVCo standardized card security, and its success will shape whether agentic payments achieve broad adoption.