Ant International partners with Visa, Mastercard on developing AI payments

Fintech company Ant International announced Thursday it has signed on Visa and Mastercard to collaborate on a new standard for payments made via AI agents, in a bet that they will be used more and more by consumers and businesses.

In a statement, the companies cited McKinsey projections expecting AI agents will handle $3 trillion to $5 trillion of global consumer commerce by 2030 . But Jiang-Ming Yang, chief innovation officer of Ant International, told CNBC that AI agents' potential for hallucination meant "we need to make sure people feel safe."

"Trust is the foundation of the AI transformation," Yang told CNBC in an interview.

The new collaboration will focus on how the payment companies can "know your agent," Ant said in the announcement, which includes building common standards that link each agent to a valid entity, assess each agent's behavior and monitor them.

It's an effort to increase interoperability for users of the different systems.

"If [an] agent registers with Ant, they don't need to register again with Visa, Mastercard," Yang said.

In the past 12 months, Visa , Mastercard and Ant International have each announced their own systems, known as protocols, for AI agents to complete payments securely.

While U.S. credit card giants Visa and Mastercard dominate transactions in developed economies, many developing economies tend to use electronic payment systems known as e-wallets. More than 50 of these e-wallets have partnered with Ant International, which runs an "Alipay+" system.