EMVCo – the technical body that creates and manages EMV® Specifications and programmes – has released a draft framework to help promote secure, interoperable and scalable card-based agentic payments. The framework provides a foundation for further industry engagement and potential specification development, with all interested stakeholders encouraged to provide their feedback on EMV® Agentic Payments – Framework for Specifications by Wednesday 30 September.

A key focus across the agentic commerce ecosystem is how to establish intent and determine that a consumer delegated authority to an AI agent to make a purchase on their behalf. Following industry input, EMVCo has focused on card-based agentic payment scenarios where intent needs to be managed over time, such as recurring purchases, cumulative budgets and post-transaction activities. These scenarios may require access to a shared intent ‘state’ that persists across multiple participants and their interactions.

EMVCo has identified an opportunity to complement cryptographic assurance provided by existing industry solutions, such as Verifiable Intent, with a common coordination point that can help participants consistently interpret consumer-authorised intent.

The draft EMV® Agentic Payments – Framework for Specifications therefore introduces the concept of ‘Intent Services’. Intent Services provide a shared, interoperable layer that enables payment participants to register, reference, retrieve and manage consumer-authorised intent before, during and after a transaction. The framework provides an overview of ecosystem roles and data fields for registering intent, maintaining lifecycle and state information, and enabling the authorised retrieval of intent-related data.

Junya Tanaka, EMVCo Executive Committee Chair, comments: “Card-based agentic payments require a globally interoperable foundation that consumers, merchants and issuers can all trust. This publication marks an important step forward by outlining a consistent approach for establishing and communicating intent alongside payment-related information, and we encourage participants from across the industry to share their feedback to shape its ongoing development.”

EMVCo has established a dedicated Agentic Payments Task Force and is actively engaging with the hundreds of industry stakeholders that participate as EMVCo Associates and Subscribers. It is also collaborating closely with various industry partners and technical bodies, including the FIDO Alliance, the OpenID Foundation, the OpenWallet Foundation and W3C.

By providing a common foundation for card-based agentic payments, the framework will help identify potential future enhancements to other EMV technologies – including EMV 3-D Secure (3DS), EMV Payment Tokenisation, EMV Secure Remote Commerce (SRC) and the EMV Digital Payment Credential (DPC). It will also inform opportunities to complement existing and emerging identity and credential standards.

Development may also be required to help enable the consistent identification of agentic transactions across the payments ecosystem. To support this, EMVCo may consider capabilities related to Know Your Agent (KYA) and Agentic Transaction Indicators to be included in future publications. Together, these could help provide interoperable mechanisms for identifying the agent involved in a payment interaction, communicating relevant agent attributes, and signalling that a transaction involved an agent acting on behalf of a consumer.

Following initial review from EMVCo Associates, EMV® Agentic Payments – Framework for Specifications is now available for public review until Wednesday 30 September. As work continues to progress, all interested stakeholders are encouraged to explore ways to participate in EMVCo and share input on the strategic considerations and technical advances shaping agentic payments.

About EMVCo:

EMV® is a registered trademark in the U.S. and other countries and an unregistered trademark elsewhere. The EMV trademark is owned by EMVCo, LLC.

EMVCo creates and manages EMV Specifications and programmes that enable seamless and secure card-based payments for businesses and consumers worldwide.

EMV Specifications support technologies including EMV Contact Chip, EMV Contactless Chip, EMV Mobile, EMV QR Codes, EMV Secure Remote Commerce, EMV 3-D Secure and EMV Payment Tokenisation and are widely used by the payments industry to develop products and services that deliver trusted and convenient in-store, online and remote card-based payments.

As a global technical body, EMVCo is collectively owned by American Express, Discover Network, JCB, Mastercard, UnionPay and Visa. Hundreds of payments stakeholders, including merchants, banks and technology providers, participate as EMVCo Associates and Subscribers to develop, evolve and enhance flexible EMV Specifications that support innovation and address marketplace needs. All EMV Specifications are available royalty free on the EMVCo website.