What is Know Your Agent (KYA)?

Not long ago, every online transaction shared a simple assumption: there was a human on the other side of the screen. Someone browsing, clicking and confirming a purchase.

That assumption is starting to break.

Today, Artificial Intelligence (AI) agents can search for products, compare options, make payments and even complete transactions on behalf of users, without the need for human supervision. This shift, often calledagentic commerce, is redefining how decisions are made and how transactions occur. But it also introduces a new and urgent question:how do you trust something that isn’t human?

That’s whereKnow Your Agent (KYA)comes in.

Understanding Know Your Agent

At its core, Know Your Agent is a framework for establishing trust in AI-driven interactions. It extends traditional identity verification into a world where software, not people, is acting.

Instead of asking “Who is the customer?”, KYA asks a broader question: Who is this agent, who is it acting for and is it authorized to act?

In practice, KYA connects three critical elements:

This connection ensures that every action taken by an AI agent can be traced back to a real, verified person and that the action itself is legitimate.

Why KYA is emerging now

The rise of AI agents isn’t theoretical; it’s already happening. From shopping assistants to financial co-pilots, agents are beginning to act autonomously in ways previously reserved for humans.

But this evolution exposes a gap in today’s trust models.

Most fraud prevention, identity verification and risk systems are designed to evaluate human behavior. Additionally, most merchant checkout processes use risk controls focused on identifying the consumer interacting with the merchant site or application (app). When an AI agent initiates a transaction, those signals become harder to interpret. Is it a trusted assistant acting on behalf of a real customer, or a sophisticated bot attempting fraud?

KYA is emerging to solve exactly this problem.

A new trust layer for agentic commerce

Agentic commerce changes not justwhotransacts, buthow trust is established.

In a traditional transaction, trust is built through familiar signals, such as login credentials, device data, location data and behavioral patterns. In an agent-driven interaction, those signals are abstracted away. The agent acts, but the human intent sits behind it.

Know Your Agent introduces a new trust layer that bridges this gap.

It allows businesses to answer critical questions in real time:

• Who is the consumer behind the agent?
• Is this authenticated agent linked to that consumer?
• Has the user authorized this specific action?
• Is the agent behaving consistently and within its permissions?
• Can this transaction be trusted?

Without these answers, agentic commerce introduces risks like fraud, misrepresentation and unauthorized activity.

With KYA, those risks become manageable and, more importantly, scalable.

From KYC to KYA: an evolution of identity

For decades, organizations have relied on Know Your Customer (KYC) to verify people and reduce fraud. But KYC alone isn’t enough in a world where AI agents act independently.

KYA doesn’t replace KYC; it builds on it.

If KYC verifies the individual, KYA verifies therelationship between the individual and the agent acting on their behalf. It adds context, continuity and accountability to every interaction and both are necessary for safe, agentic commerce.

In other words, KYC answerswho you are. KYA answerswho (or what) is acting for you, and whether it should be trusted.

How KYA works in practice

While the concept is still evolving, most KYA approaches share a common goal: creating averifiable chain of trust between humans and AI agents.

This typically involves:

• Establishing a secure and auditable link between a verified person and their agent
• Confirming that the agent is authorized to act within defined permissions
• Continuously evaluating behavior and risk over time

Ensuring a verified connection between humans and AI agents confirms that agent-initiated transactions are grounded in real identity.

Why KYA matters for businesses

For organizations, KYA is more than a security concept; it’s an enabler of growth.

As agentic commerce expands, businesses will increasingly interact with AI agents as a new customer base. Those who can confidently verify and trust these interactions will be able to:

• Accept agent-initiated transactions with lower risk
• Reduce friction for legitimate users
• Unlock new, automated customer experiences

Those that can’t may find themselves required to block or challenge these interactions, limiting adoption and missing out on emerging revenue streams.

The reality is simple:agentic commerce will not scale without trust.

Bringing it to life with Experian^® Agent Trust^TM

This is exactly the challenge we’re addressing with our first-of-its-kind framework, Experian^® Agent Trust^TM.

Experian Agent Trust is designed to create a secure, verifiable link between consumers and the AI agents acting on their behalf, bringing identity, intent and accountability into AI-driven transactions.

At the center of this approach isHuman-to-Agent Binding, which connects a verified individual, their device and their AI agent. This binding is recorded in Experian’s Agent Trust Registry and creates a persistent trust signal that allows businesses to understand exactly who is behind every agent-driven action.

By grounding agent activity in verified identity, we are extending our expertise in fraud prevention and identity verification into the next era of commerce, one where AI agents don’t just assist, but act.

The future of trust starts with knowing your agent

As AI agents grow more capable, they won’t just support transactions, they’ll initiate them, negotiate them and complete them autonomously. This evolution demands a new foundation for trust, one that extends beyond verifying customers to understanding and validating the agents acting on their behalf. As agentic commerce accelerates, organizations that embrace Know Your Agent (KYA) will be better equipped to innovate with confidence, scale responsibly and strengthen trust at every interaction.