ING Group, NatWest Group, ASB Bank, Bank of America,, Capital One, and Commonwealth Bank of Australia have jointly published a shared set of principles intended to support the development of trusted agentic commerce. The paper is aimed at establishing a framework for a future in which AI agents play a greater role in how consumers and businesses select and pay for products and services.
The six institutions position themselves at the centre of the payments ecosystem, connecting consumers, businesses, and merchants across a high volume of daily transactions. As agentic commerce develops, the participating banks state that customers and merchants should retain choice, control, and flexibility over how payments are made and received, while transactions remain safe and secure.
Five focus areas
The principles address five areas: transparency, safety, privacy and data, choice, and interoperability. Together, these are intended to provide a foundation for further discussion on how agentic commerce should develop across the industry, rather than a finished standard.
Representatives from the participating banks described agentic commerce as a development with the potential to reshape how customers shop and pay, while stressing that trust, identity verification, fraud prevention, and liability management need to be addressed as AI agents take on a greater role in transactions. Several representatives also linked the initiative to broader payments modernisation efforts already underway in their respective markets, including in New Zealand and the UK.
Next steps and wider engagement
The publication builds on an ongoing industry conversation rather than concluding it. The consortium has invited other banks and institutions across the payments ecosystem to engage with the principles, contribute perspectives, and collaborate on a blueprint for applying them in practice. According to notes accompanying the announcement, the group's next step is to publish a further paper detailing how the principles can be implemented, with continued engagement expected from customers, industry participants, and other stakeholders as the work progresses.
Industry context
The initiative reflects growing attention across the banking sector to how AI agents might participate directly in payment flows, a shift that raises questions around authorisation, consumer protection, and cross-border interoperability. Through the process of publishing principles jointly rather than individually, the six banks aim to encourage a degree of industry-wide alignment before agentic commerce becomes more widely adopted, rather than allowing fragmented approaches to develop across different markets and providers.
