Agentic commerce is advancing fast. Payment networks, wallets, and agent platforms are making it easier for software to search, select, and transact. That part of the market is moving.
The harder commercial issue sits with the merchant at the point of fulfilment. When an AI agent places an order, renews a service, or initiates a transfer, the merchant needs to know exactly who the agent is acting for, what that person authorised, and whether the agent stayed within those limits. Without that proof, merchants inherit a new category of risk that includes rogue agent execution, disputed intent, and losses that are much harder to recover.
AI agents need delegated authority
A successful payment doesn’t prove that an agent acted with the right authority. Payment rails confirm that an instrument was valid and that funds can move. Merchants still need proof that the action itself was authorised by a verified human and that the action matched the scope of that permission.
That is why delegated authority needs to be explicit, bounded, auditable, and revocable. In agentic commerce, businesses need a way to enforce authority before a transaction completes, not reconstruct intent after a dispute.
Know Your Agent (KYA) should prove intent and scope
Current market discussion often stays too close to execution. The questions around checkout flows, wallet support, and payment authorisation matter, but they do not answer whether an agent is acting within the permission a person gave it. That is the gap KYA needs to close.
At OneID®, we treat KYA as an enforcement problem. We present the intended action through a trusted interface, capture explicit approval from the user, and bind that approval to a verified identity through a cryptographically signed mandate. Merchants and payment networks can then verify the signed intent, the authority scope, and whether the agent’s execution matches what the user approved. If the agent deviates, the mismatch is detectable.
OneID® is building the trust layer for agentic commerce
At OneID®, we’re building the foundations of agentic commerce’s independent trust layer. We bind verified human identity, signed intent, delegation policy, risk controls, and audit-grade evidence into a single transaction fabric. That gives merchants defensible proof, gives users more control, and gives platforms a stronger basis for safe automation.
Agentic commerce will only scale when merchants can trust the authority behind the transaction. Read our whitepaper to see how OneID® is building the trust infrastructure for agentic commerce, and why enforceable authority will decide which agent-led transactions can scale safely.
