Cloudflare and Payment Giants Develop Security for AI Agents

Cloudflare, Inc. is collaborating with Visa Inc. and Mastercard Inc. to establish a security infrastructure for agentic commerce, allowing AI agents to perform digital payments. This system uses Cloudflare's Web Bot Auth proposal, which applies public-key cryptography and HTTP message signatures to authenticate agents. The framework integrates Visa's Trusted Agent Protocol and Mastercard's Agent Pay, enabling merchants to verify that AI agents are authorized without changing their existing infrastructure. Cloudflare, Inc. intends to build these protocols into its Agent SDK for developer access via standard APIs.

Mastercard Inc. is further extending this effort by developing a framework for agentic payments that utilizes tokenization, biometric authentication, and intent-based consent. A key element of this strategy is the Know Your Agent (KYA) identity verification layer, which distinguishes legitimate AI agents from malicious bots. Mastercard Inc. is also developing agent-to-agent protocols and API interfaces to ensure interoperability and prevent fraud.

Other financial institutions are similarly integrating these technologies. UBS Group AG has created an Agentic AI Center of Excellence to embed autonomous intelligence into its operational fabric and govern the use of AI agents as intelligent collaborators.