Six banks published shared principles for agentic commerce on 22 September, setting expectations for transactions in which artificial-intelligence agents help consumers select and pay for goods or services. The participants are ASB Bank, Bank of America, Capital One, Commonwealth Bank of Australia, ING and NatWest. Their framework covers five areas: transparency, safety, privacy and data, choice and interoperability. It is voluntary rather than a binding industry standard.
The participating institutions span the United States, United Kingdom, Netherlands, Australia and New Zealand. Reuters reported that the banks said using AI agents for online shopping could increase the risk of scams, fraud and data-privacy breaches. ING said customers must remain in control, understand what the agent is doing and have confidence that their data and payments are secure.
TRANSPARENCY AND CUSTOMER CONTROL
The principles call for consumers to understand when an AI agent is involved and what it is doing. They also stress that customers and merchants should retain choice, control and flexibility over how payments are made and received.
Bank of America said building confidence among consumers, merchants and financial institutions will require thoughtful approaches to identity, authorisation, fraud prevention, liability management and customer protection.
A BLUEPRINT COMES NEXT
The group invited merchants, technology providers and other financial institutions to engage with the principles and help turn them into practical standards. The interoperability principle states that consumers and merchants should benefit from connectivity across the agentic commerce ecosystem.
The next milestone will be a subsequent paper explaining how the principles could be implemented in practice.