Looking at payment network products/capabilities: Agentic Commerce

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Agentic commerce enables AI agents to autonomously shop on behalf of cardholders by connecting/leveraging a payment network’s infrastructure and services. Cardholders issue a payment instruction after asking the agent to find or book a product or service. If consent is given, the agent may use the cardholder's transaction history to offer personalized results. The cardholder authenticates the payment instruction (e.g., via pass keys). Before the checkout process, the agent requests activation of its agent token. The network validates that the token request matches the payment instruction. After activation, the agent completes a (Click to Pay) guest checkout and notifies both the network and the cardholder.

What are agent tokens?
‍To manage risk, the payment networks introduced a new type of token, the agent token, which is provisioned in an inactive state to the AI agent and activated (for limited use) only after the network validates that the product or service identified by the AI agent matches the cardholder-authorized payment instruction.

What are payment instructions?
‍Payment instructions are digitally signed objects that record a cardholder’s explicit consent for an AI agent to complete a specific purchase. These payment instructions,among others, securely bind the agent’s identity, merchant, product details,amount, and the agent token ensuring the following future transaction reflectswhat the user approved.

How is the transaction processed?

The payment network manages the transaction process across severalkey steps:

1. Capturing and validation of thepayment instruction: The payment network verifies that any payment credential activation request (activation of agent token) made by the AI agent matches the payment instruction previously authorized by the cardholder, including parameters suchas the intended merchant, authorized amount, and contextual data.

2. Authorization: The authorization request is processed as normal, with additional controls or value-added services applied to ensure alignment with the original payment instruction.

3. Clearing & settlement: These steps are completed following standard processing flows.

4. Post-purchase signaling: The AI agent shares the outcome of the transaction with the payment network. These signals, combined with the original payment instruction, may be used to support dispute resolution.

Curious to know more? Download the PDF (link below).

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