IDEMIA Secure Transactions has introduced payment infrastructure for card networks that want to handle purchases initiated by AI agents. The offering combines payment tokenization, passkey-based cardholder authentication, limits on how an agent can spend and a record of the consumer’s consent.
The company is targeting domestic and regional payment schemes as well as private-label and co-branded card issuers. Those networks could make their cards available at an automated checkout without handing the entire authorization process to an AI shopping service or merchant. The offering extends IDEMIA’s existing Token Platform and FIDO2-certified authentication capabilities with functions for capturing consent and preserving evidence for disputes.
Under the proposed flow, IDEMIA’s token platform releases a tokenized payment credential once the consumer’s consent has been verified. A token is a substitute for the underlying card number that can be used under defined conditions. IDEMIA says its system can restrict the token to a particular merchant, spending amount, purchase category or time period. Such limits define what an agent may buy even when the cardholder is not present for each transaction.
The authentication component uses the company’s FIDO2-certified capabilities to support passkeys during enrollment and payment. Passkeys are cryptographic sign-in credentials that typically allow a user to approve access with a device unlock, including a biometric check. In this setting, the cardholder’s authentication and the agent’s spending authority are separate controls: recognizing the consumer does not by itself grant an agent unlimited access to a payment account.
IDEMIA also says the service can preserve proof that a consumer authorized an agent-initiated purchase. The record is intended to be available later if a cardholder disputes a transaction, including after the software agent that initiated it is no longer available.
The FIDO Alliance has been developing standards for trusted AI-agent authentication, while PhotonPay and Mastercard demonstrated a live agentic payment in Hong Kong. IDEMIA’s network-focused offering addresses the related problem of linking a shopper’s permission to a limited-use payment credential and preserving evidence of that authorization.
For participating schemes, the controls are designed to keep the issuer and network involved when an AI agent selects a card and completes checkout on the shopper’s behalf.
