Visa and Mastercard Back New Agentic Payments Alliance

Visa, Mastercard, Fiserv, Circle, Solana, and Remitly have signed on to a new coalition built to steer how AI-driven commerce takes shape.

The alliance brings together payment networks, a payments technology provider, a stablecoin issuer, a blockchain network, and a remittance provider, all under one working group focused on the rules and standards that will govern how AI agents transact on people’s behalf.

Where the alliance came from

Stablecoin platform Rain created the Agentic Payments Alliance. McKinsey puts the potential size of the worldwide agentic commerce market at anywhere from USD 3 trillion to USD 5 trillion by 2030.

Membership has already grown past 25 organizations, including payment networks, infrastructure providers, and crypto platforms with a stake in how AI-driven transactions get built and regulated.

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How the coalition is structured

The APA is set up as a working coalition rather than a company controlled by any single member. Its founding organizations will set the charter and mission together, so each member has a hand in shaping the group’s direction instead of deferring to one dominant player.

What the alliance plans to work on

The group’s early priorities cover shared research and frameworks, testing emerging standards for agent identity and authorization, and advocacy on the regulatory questions this new market is already starting to raise.

Rain CEO Farooq Malik summed up the thinking behind the group’s structure this way: “No single company should get to decide how agents transact on someone’s behalf.” His broader point was that setting the rules for this market takes input from three different vantage points at once: the platforms building the underlying infrastructure, the regulators who oversee it, and the companies closest to how people are actually using agents today. Getting all three at the same table is the point of the alliance.

Also read: Chime Looks at Adding Stablecoins to Its Banking App

Not the only initiative in this space

This isn’t the only industry effort of its kind. Google and Mastercard are backing a parallel push through the Fido Alliance to build standards that work across different platforms. Google is contributing its open protocol, and Mastercard is bringing its own trust and verification technology, known as Verifiable Intent, into the mix.

What this means for FinTech and crypto operators

Agentic commerce is moving from concept to infrastructure faster than most regulatory frameworks can keep up with. When payment networks, stablecoin issuers, and blockchain platforms start setting shared standards for agent identity, authorization, and transaction rules, those standards will shape what compliance and licensing eventually require, often before any regulator writes a formal rule.

Companies building payment, remittance, or stablecoin infrastructure with an AI-agent layer should watch this closely. The technical standards worked out inside coalitions like the APA tend to become the baseline regulators reference once formal oversight catches up.

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