(18 August 2026 – Global) A coalition of major payments and technology firms has formed the Agentic Payments Alliance (APA), a working group aimed at guiding the development of AI-driven commerce.
Founding members include Visa, Mastercard, Fiserv, Circle, Solana, and Remitly, with membership already exceeding 25 organisations. The alliance was initiated by stablecoin platform Rain, though it will operate collectively with no single owner, and members will set its charter and mission together.
Early priorities include shared research, frameworks for agent identity and authorisation standards, and regulatory advocacy around agentic commerce — a sector projected to generate between $3 trillion and $5 trillion in global activity by 2030. “No single company should get to decide how agents transact on someone’s behalf,” said Rain CEO Farooq Malik. “That has to come from the platforms building the rails, the regulators setting the rules, and the innovators closest to how agents are actually being used today.”
The APA is not alone in the space. A separate Fido Alliance initiative, backed by Google and Mastercard, is also working to develop interoperable agentic commerce standards, with Google contributing its open protocol and Mastercard providing its Verifiable Intent trust layer.