Invest1 publisher3 min readPublished
Six banks outline five voluntary principles for agentic commerce
ASB Bank, Bank of America, Capital One, Commonwealth Bank of Australia, ING Group and NatWest set out transparency, safety, privacy, choice and interoperability in a document KeyBanc called voluntary and non-binding.
The Investor · Invest desk
What happened
- Six banks, among them Bank of America, Capital One, ING Group, NatWest, ASB Bank and Commonwealth Bank of Australia, published a paper on Tuesday setting out principles for developing agentic commerce.
- The document names five principles for agentic AI development: transparency, safety, privacy and data, choice, and interoperability.
- The group says its next step is a second paper on how the principles can be implemented in practice.
- The paper arrived while hyper-scalers were publicly calling for a slowdown in AI development.
Compiled by The InvestorSomething wrong?How this is made
Why it matters
- constraint The economics of an agent-initiated payment keep being set where the one-time credential is minted.
- exposure A bank can carry the account and the credit risk of an agent purchase while the services built on top of the credential are billed by someone else.
- decision Every issuer now has to choose between funding its own agent authentication gateway and accepting whatever verification step the network protocols specify.
In an agent-initiated purchase, the revenue attaches to the payment credential. American Banker reports that the companies issuing those one-time tokens, among them Visa, Mastercard and Stripe, are paid when a token is issued and can bolt further value-added services onto it [6]. "One-time payment credentials position Visa, Mastercard, PayPal & Stripe to add new AI-initiated personalized data and value-triggered services based on intent and attribution," Richard Crone, chief executive of Crone Consulting, said. "But issuing the underlying account does not automatically give banks a share of those revenues" [7]. Meta, which has not traditionally had a foothold in payments, has said it intends to monetize payments [16].
Two readings of the paper are on the record. KeyBanc analysts said in a research note on Wednesday: "We read the publication as issuers asserting a governance voice separate from the network and platform-led protocol track, rather than an actionable change to the competitive landscape" [8]. The analysts called the principles voluntary and non-binding, and said the document does not include fee, interchange or routing content or an implementation timetable [9]. Crone is blunter about the motive: the banks did this, he told American Banker, because the payment networks Visa and Mastercard "are not representing their interests" [10].
"As agentic commerce continues to evolve, establishing trust and confidence across the ecosystem will be critical to its long-term success," Mark Monaco said [3]. The banks are inviting "other banks and institutions across the payments ecosystem to engage with the principles, share different perspectives and work together on developing a blueprint for applying the principles in practice" [4].
So the score is one document out and one promised, with no dated commitment attached to either [11]. The features are already shipping. Payments companies and fintechs have agentic functions in live products, and the paper landed in a week when hyperscalers were asking for a slowdown in AI development [12][13]. In my view the principles buy the issuers a place in the protocol conversation and very little that bites in the next year. The counter-case sits inside the interoperability principle itself. If the agent protocols end up needing a bank to authenticate both the customer and the agent, the issuer gateway is where consent and spending limits get enforced, and that is a position worth negotiating from. Crone would have banks build it now. "Banks' response should be Bring Your Own AI using a secure verification gateway that authenticates customers and agents, enforces consent and spending limits and preserves the bank's account and digital banking app as the system of record," he said [14]. That, he argued, would give "banks a basis to negotiate data rights, attribution compensation and revenue sharing" [15].
Crone said the market is moving faster than a white paper can keep up with, and that banks risk losing customers not only to AI but to competitors and large language models that use AI to control discovery, payment selection and account opening [17].
What to watch
- Whether the promised second paper on implementation carries dated milestones, or repeats the voluntary framing Keybanc described.
- Whether any bank outside the original six signs on, and whether Visa or Mastercard protocol work adopts an issuer-run verification step.
- Whether banks start charging for authentication and attribution data. Crone says a gateway would open that revenue line.