Know Your Agent, four ways the term is used.
Know Your Agent (KYA) means checking which AI agent is acting, who it acts for, and what it is allowed to do, before a business lets it browse, buy, or change an account. The name echoes Know Your Customer (KYC). Since 2025 it has named an identity product category, a token protocol, a card-network collaboration, and this company.
Same three letters, four different things.
When someone says KYA, ask which one they mean. Each is described in its owner’s words, with the source.
A product category
Identity vendors sell KYA as verification for AI agents. Vouched launched a Know Your Agent suite in May 2025. Trulioo pairs KYA with a Digital Agent Passport. Sumsub launched AI Agent Verification in January 2026, binding agents to verified human identity. Persona offers a KYA solution.
Skyfire’s KYAPay protocol
Skyfire publishes KYAPay as IETF individual drafts: JWT formats for agent identity, payment, or both, and a draft for exchanging them for OAuth access tokens. Individual drafts have no IETF standing. On 30 September 2026, Mastercard said it is working with Skyfire, “a provider of Know Your Agent (KYA) technology.”
A card-network collaboration
On 10 September 2026, Ant International, Mastercard, and Visa said they had begun collaboration on a “Know-Your-Agent (KYA) interoperability framework.” The announcement names Visa’s Trusted Agent Protocol, Mastercard Verifiable Intent, and Ant’s Agentic Mobile Protocol, and says the companies “will now explore opportunities to work towards common principles.” No specification or timeline has been published.
KnowYourAgent, the company
KnowYourAgent (KYA) builds verification and evidence infrastructure for AI agent orders at checkout. A merchant can verify an agent and check the signed trace its operator issued before payment; these checks are in beta. Evidence records are in a founding merchant pilot. KnowYourAgent is not KYAPay and is not part of the card-network framework.
Three questions, answered by different specs.
No single protocol answers all three. A valid signature answers only the first.
- 01
Which agent is this?
A signature on the request ties it to a published key, so a site can tell which key holder sent it. It says nothing about what the person behind the agent allowed.
Specs
- 02
Who does it act for, and what may it do?
A mandate, consent grant, or session records what the person allowed: which merchant, how much, which actions.
Specs
- 03
What happened?
Order events, receipts, and the merchant’s own checks show what the agent did. Most specs leave keeping them to someone else.
Specs
Short answers.
What does KYA stand for?
Know Your Agent. It borrows from Know Your Customer (KYC) and Know Your Business (KYB), and applies the idea to AI agents that act for people or companies.
Is Know Your Agent a standard?
Not as a single specification. KYAPay is a set of IETF individual drafts from Skyfire. The Ant International, Mastercard, and Visa framework has no published spec. Most other uses of the term describe vendor products.
How is KYA different from KYC?
KYC verifies a person. KYA verifies an agent, then links it to the person or business it acts for and the limits it was given. An agent can be genuine and still go beyond what its user allowed.
Is KnowYourAgent the same as KYAPay?
No. KYAPay is Skyfire’s protocol. KnowYourAgent is a separate company that builds verification and evidence infrastructure for AI agent orders.
Know the agent. Keep the record.
We’ll show how KYA verifies agents at your checkout and what it keeps for each order.