Securing agentic commerce: helping AI Agents transact with Visa and Mastercard

The emergence of agentic commerce, where AI agents conduct transactions on behalf of consumers, presents new security challenges, prompting Cloudflare to partner with Visa and Mastercard to secure these automated processes. Visa's Trusted Agent Protocol and Mastercard's Agent Pay help merchants differentiate between legitimate AI agents and malicious bots through the use of Web Bot Auth, which employs HTTP Message Signatures with public key cryptography for agent authentication. This collaboration ensures agents provide verifiable, time-based, and non-replayable requests, allowing merchants to manage interactions during both browsing and payment phases. Cloudflare acts as a validator, helping merchants by confirming the authenticity of agent interactions through cryptographic checks and aiding in the seamless integration of these protocols without infrastructure changes. The initiative also involves developing support for these protocols within Cloudflare's Agent SDK and managed rulesets, facilitating secure and authorized automated commerce while maintaining site security and enabling revenue opportunities through trusted agents.