Mastercard Google and OpenAI Join FIDO to Set Standards for AI Agent Payments.
The FIDO Alliance, the industry body renowned for championing the Passkeys standard, has officially announced the formation of a new working group dedicated to establishing safety and identity standards for AI Agentic transactions. As autonomous AI agents begin to handle complex decision-making and financial tasks, this initiative aims to ensure that both users and service providers can interact with these agents with confidence and security.
The Two-Pillar Approach
The working group is divided into two specialized tracks, bringing together tech giants and financial leaders:
Agent Identity & Authentication: Comprising representatives from Google, OpenAI, Amazon, and Okta, this group focuses on verifying the legitimacy of AI agents. To fast-track this standard, Google has contributed its Agent Payments Protocol (AP2) a protocol designed to allow AI agents to act on behalf of users securely to the FIDO Alliance.
Secure Payment Processes: Led by financial titans Mastercard and Visa, this track aims to standardize the payment flow. Mastercard has committed its "Verifiable Intent" framework to the alliance, providing a mechanism for verifying the purpose and authorization of transactions initiated by AI.
The Three Core Goals
FIDO’s objective is to build an ecosystem defined by three pillars:
User Control: Ensuring that users have full visibility and control over what their agents are authorized to do.
Service Provider Trust: Allowing merchants and services to verify an agent’s authority without ever accessing the user's private personal data.
Secure Transaction Proofs: Developing a clear, immutable process for confirming that a transaction was indeed authorized by the agent's human controller.
This standard is at the heart of what's called "Zero-Trust for AI Agents." In the future, online stores won't ask "Who are you?" but rather "Are you authorized to use this money for this deal?" using the same authentication system we currently use with Passkeys. This will drastically reduce the chances of being scammed by fake AI agents.
The fact that Mastercard is providing the Verifiable Intent framework to FIDO is very interesting. It's a shift from "transactions without substance" to "embedding intent into the transaction." For example, instead of an agent simply sending money, the system will send a confirmation file stating, "This payment is for this item, at a price not exceeding this amount." This eliminates user concerns about AI exceeding defined limits.
The collaboration between competitors like Google, OpenAI, Amazon, and Visa/Mastercard in FIDO signals that "no one wants to win in a world where AI can be easily deceived." If users lose trust in AI agents, this market will collapse. Creating a central standard is the only way to make "Agent Commerce" a reality globally within the next 2-3 years.
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Source: Google

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