Visa has unveiled its Trusted Agent Protocol, a new industry framework designed to establish secure and trusted communication between AI agents and merchants during transactions. Developed in collaboration with Cloudflare, the protocol marks a major milestone in shaping the future of AI-powered commerce, ensuring that interactions between intelligent agents, merchants, and consumers remain seamless and trustworthy.
The introduction of this framework comes as AI’s influence on e-commerce continues to grow rapidly. According to Visa, AI-driven traffic to retail websites in the U.S. surged by over 4,700% in the past year, and more than 85% of shoppers who have used AI tools to assist in purchases say it improved their experience. However, as AI begins to automate shopping and payments, it introduces new challenges for merchants — including managing bot detection systems that often block legitimate transactions, verifying agent-driven checkouts, and maintaining visibility into the human consumer behind an AI agent.
The Trusted Agent Protocol aims to address these challenges by providing merchants with a standardized framework that distinguishes verified, commerce-intent AI agents from malicious bots. Through agent-specific cryptographic signatures, the system allows approved AI agents to securely share essential data — such as purchase intent, consumer recognition, and payment information — without compromising user privacy or disrupting existing checkout processes.
Jack Forestell, Chief Product & Strategy Officer at Visa, emphasized the importance of trust as AI becomes a key player in digital transactions:
“We believe the entire payments ecosystem has a responsibility to ensure sellers can trust AI agents as much as they trust their best customers and networks. Our new agent protocol is focused on creating no-code functionality for merchants to securely identify agents with an intent to buy and provide a better payments and personalized experience for known users.”
Cloudflare’s Chief Strategy Officer, Stephanie Cohen, added that securing this emerging ecosystem requires shared responsibility:
“Our work with Visa on the Trusted Agent Protocol is a vital step in building the necessary guardrails for this new era of commerce.”
Supporting Merchants in the Age of AI-Driven Shopping
In a world where AI agents increasingly handle product searches, comparisons, and payments, merchants must be able to authenticate these digital intermediaries while maintaining customer trust. The Trusted Agent Protocol provides three key assurances:
- Agent Intent: Identifies when an AI agent is initiating a legitimate purchase or information request.
- Consumer Recognition: Enables merchants to confirm if a returning user is linked to an existing account or prior transaction.
- Payment Integration: Allows agents to securely pass payment data to support a merchant’s preferred checkout process.
Built for Open, Interoperable AI Commerce
While the first iteration of the Trusted Agent Protocol applies to the Visa network, the company emphasized its commitment to open collaboration with standards bodies such as IETF, OpenID Foundation, and EMVCo. Visa is also working with Coinbase to ensure interoperability with the x402 protocol, aligning with broader industry efforts like the Agentic Commerce Protocol to create a consistent global framework for AI-driven payments.
Built on the HTTP Message Signature standard and aligned with WebAuthn, the protocol enables merchants and AI agents to establish secure trust channels using existing web infrastructure — without significant changes to checkout or payment interfaces.
Now available through the Visa Developer Center and GitHub, the Trusted Agent Protocol reinforces Visa’s leadership in shaping the next phase of secure, intelligent, and interoperable digital commerce.
