EMVCo seeks comment on card-based agentic payments framework

EMVCo has published a draft framework for card-based agentic payments and opened the document for public comment until Wednesday 30 September. The draft introduces a shared layer called “Intent Services” to register, manage and retrieve consumer-authorised intent when an AI agent acts on a cardholder’s behalf.

The proposal focuses on scenarios where delegated intent must persist and be interpreted across multiple parties and interactions, including recurring purchases, cumulative budgets and actions that occur after a transaction. EMVCo says these situations may require a shared intent state that merchants, issuers and payment processors can access in a controlled way so purchases reflect the consumer’s authorisation over time.

Intent Services is described as a coordination layer to complement cryptographic tools such as Verifiable Intent. The draft sets out ecosystem roles and specific data fields for registering intent, tracking lifecycle and state information, and supporting authorised retrieval of intent-related records before, during and after payments. The framework aims to give participants a consistent method to interpret consumer-authorised instructions alongside payment data.

EMVCo has established an Agentic Payments Task Force and engaged its Associates and Subscribers for initial review. The organisation is also working with technical partners including the FIDO Alliance, the OpenID Foundation, the OpenWallet Foundation and the W3C. The draft will inform possible updates to EMV technologies such as EMV 3-D Secure, EMV Payment Tokenisation, EMV Secure Remote Commerce and the EMV Digital Payment Credential.

In a statement, Junya Tanaka, EMVCo Executive Committee Chair, wrote: “Card-based agentic payments require a globally interoperable foundation that consumers, merchants and issuers can all trust. The publication outlines a consistent approach for establishing and communicating intent alongside payment-related information, and we encourage participants across the industry to share their feedback to shape its ongoing development.”

EMVCo also describes potential future work on the consistent identification of agentic transactions. The organisation may consider Know Your Agent (KYA) processes and Agentic Transaction Indicators to signal that a transaction involved an agent, convey relevant agent attributes and support mechanisms for identifying the agent in payment interactions. The draft framework is presented as a starting point for further technical specification work and industry discussion.

Stakeholders and interested parties are invited to review the draft “EMV Agentic Payments – Framework for Specifications” and submit feedback by 30 September. EMVCo says responses will help shape next steps and any potential specification development for agentic commerce across the payments ecosystem.