[Money20/20 – Trulioo & Mastercard interview] Agentic commerce has a trust problem, not a tech problem

AI agents are moving from product discovery towards the checkout, but the infrastructure needed to trust them is lagging. While attending Money20/20 USA, Sechkin Yilgaren, Senior Vice President of Security Solutions at Mastercard, and Sumant Gandhi, Vice President of Products at Trulioo, discussed where agentic commerce stands, what is preventing it from scaling, and why agent identity has become a priority for merchants, banks, and PSPs.

Day zero for agentic payments

Both speakers described the market as commercially at day zero, despite rapid technological progress. Consumers already use agents to compare prices and plan purchases, but completing transactions raises fundamental questions. According to Yilgaren, the industry must be able to confirm whether a transaction was initiated by an agent, whether the consumer authorised it and whether the agent is hallucinating. Mastercard’s agent trust framework addresses these issues through four pillars: identity, intent, intelligence, and controls.

Gandhi noted that closed pilots are underway, but liability remains unresolved. Merchants are uncertain about accepting agentic transactions, and consumers lack clarity on where their protection lies. Today, a cardholder with a problem calls their issuer; once authority is delegated to an agent, that route is far less clear.

Why merchants are blocking agents

For many merchants, blocking agent traffic comes down to visibility. Businesses have built customer relationships on loyalty programmes and rewards, yet personal agents currently obscure who the end customer is. Automated transactions were historically treated as suspicious and declined. Now they may be legitimate, leaving merchants to absorb risk with limited data.

Yilgaren identified three missing pieces: the consumer’s intent, the identity of the agent itself, and brand preference and loyalty data. This is the gap know your agent (KYA) aims to close. Gandhi explained that KYA is complex because it spans the companies building agents, the consumers using them and the agents themselves. Intent is particularly hard to capture, as it can emerge gradually over a long conversation.

Rules written for a different era

Current fraud and chargeback rules were designed for card-present and ecommerce transactions, and do not cover scenarios such as an agent ordering 500 items when asked for a single dog toy. Sellers need enough information to defend against chargebacks and first-party fraud, and Yilgaren called for standards, interoperability and transparent data sharing across issuers, networks and technology providers. Ahead of the holiday season, he expects agentic volumes to grow alongside fraud and scams, making it essential that risk insights reach the ecosystem before a transaction rather than after.

What comes next

Adoption will hinge less on agent capability than on trust infrastructure. Agent identity, auditable intent, clear liability and shared standards must mature together, and no single player can deliver them alone. Fraudsters are watching too, looking to turn legitimate agents into malicious ones. Merchants should track two early signals: how often shoppers browse via agents without converting, and how often they face transactions they are unsure whether to accept. The goal, both speakers agreed, is not to block agents but to build enough confidence for agentic commerce to grow.

About Trulioo

Trulioo is the identity and fraud risk intelligence platform trusted by global enterprises to verify people and businesses, stop bad actors and manage exposure. Covering 195 countries, Trulioo can verify more than 14,000 ID documents and 700 million business entities and screen against more than 6,000 watchlists. Hundreds of predictive risk signals, consortium data and industry-specific machine learning models help companies combat fraud and reduce risk exposure. By combining proprietary technology with regional expertise, Trulioo delivers verification and risk decisions on one platform, in any market.

 

About Mastercard

Mastercard powers economies and empowers people in 200+ countries and territories worldwide. Together with our customers, we’re building a resilient economy where everyone can prosper. We support a wide range of digital payment choices, making transactions secure, simple, smart and accessible. Our technology and innovation, partnerships and networks combine to deliver a unique set of products and services that help people, businesses and governments realise their greatest potential.