On Tuesday, Bank of America, Capital One, NatWest, ING, New Zealand's ASB, and Australia's Commonwealth Bank jointly released a principles document titled "Building Trust in Agent Commerce," stating that granting shopping chatbots greater autonomy may increase rates of fraud, scams, and disputes, with risks covering five categories: transparency, security, privacy data, choice, and interoperability.

The document specifies that consumers are unclear whether agents are on their side, worrying about making wrong purchases or overspending, and are more concerned about not knowing whom to seek compensation from after being defrauded. Specific pathways include agents requesting card numbers and directly entering them on websites, or directing payments to less secure channels; attackers can impersonate or hijack agents and merchants, using new social engineering tactics.

Issuing banks and acquiring banks often cannot see the identity of the agent, the merchant entity, the user's original intent, and purchase details, making it difficult to allocate responsibility along the value chain when issues arise. Banks demand to retain auditable records from instructions, authorizations, intents to payment results, and to include all relevant parties in the dispute process. Mark Monaco, head of global payments at Bank of America, emphasized identity, authorization, fraud, and liability management; Todd Kennedy, head of payment strategy at Capital One, stated the need to shape a secure ecosystem from the customer side.

The six institutions plan to discuss with policymakers: transactions must disclose whether they were completed by an AI agent, the decision-making process must be explainable, and customer data must be separately protected. The document also acknowledges customer enthusiasm for agent commerce, stating it could become a mainstream transaction method, but standards lag behind technology. Further implementation details will be released later.

ChatGPT's instant checkout has covered over 1 million Shopify stores and Etsy, but still requires user confirmation for orders and payments. UK retailer John Lewis reported that search traffic from AI agents rose from 0.3% to 2.5% within a year. Another survey indicated that over two-fifths of Americans have encountered or nearly encountered AI scams.

Those buying are banks wanting to write card organization rules into the agent layer, while those selling are model companies competing for checkout entry. Funds are shifting from merchant cash registers to in-dialog payments, with disputes and chargeback costs initially hitting issuing banks and merchants. Beneficiaries are banks and card networks that still hold the right to refuse payments, while those under pressure are agent products that explicitly fill in card numbers on third-party pages and platforms unable to prove "user intent."

The six banks clearly list commission and token cost-driven goods and payment recommendations as conflicts of interest, requiring agents not to prioritize user interests for higher splits.

Source: Public Information