Know Your Agent: The Next Chapter in Digital Trust

AI is entering a new phase of participation in digital commerce as the world moves from assisted experiences to acting systems with intelligent agents that research, decide and transact independently.

In the near future, those agents will open accounts, compare prices, book travel, restock supplies and even verify other agents. That evolution promises extraordinary convenience and speed, but it also demands a rethinking of trust.

If an agent makes a payment or creates a contract, who authorized that action? Who built the code? Who is accountable if something goes wrong?

Those are not abstract questions. They define the next frontier of verification.

Why Provenance Matters

In any trusted system, provenance – the ability to trace where something came from and verify its authenticity – is foundational. Digital identity has long used that principle for people and businesses. Now, it must extend to the intelligent systems acting on their behalf.

The emerging framework known as Know Your Agent (KYA) brings that idea to life. It focuses on verifying the origins, integrity and permissions of AI agents to ensure each action can be traced back to a verified source, governed by real human consent.

A recent Trulioo white paper, “Know Your Agent: An Identity Framework for Trusted Agentic Commerce,” explores how agent provenance could establish a baseline of trust across the digital economy. It envisions a future in which every agent carries verifiable credentials, allowing merchants, payment providers and regulators to quickly authenticate the code and its authorization.

That kind of structure could do for agentic commerce what encryption did for online payments: Make trust scalable.

Building the Path to Trusted Agents

This next chapter of digital commerce won’t arrive overnight. The rise of agentic systems will involve growing pains, from certifying millions of agents at scale to earning confidence from merchants and consumers.

“Agentic commerce is going to work,” according to Hal Lonas, Trulioo Chief Technology Officer, “but it will start slowly and in restrictive ways that are human-approved at the decision gates.” 

The early years of agentic commerce will feel uneven. Some industries will move quickly to embrace agents while others approach with caution. Retailers and marketplaces will have to decide how to recognize legitimate agent interactions and block malicious ones. Consumers, too, will need a way to know when they’re engaging with trusted, verified agents.

Common frameworks and open verification protocols will be critical to establishing trust in the new environment. Repositories or directories of certified agents – much like the certificate authorities that underpin secure web browsing – could give participants confidence the agents they encounter are authentic and accountable.

A Living System of Trust

The shift toward agentic identity is not simply a technical milestone. It’s an inflection point for digital trust.

Over the past decade, verification evolved from static checks to dynamic risk management. Now, it’s expanding again to include intelligent entities capable of acting autonomously. 

Jonathan McGowan, PayOS CEO, spoke on this in a recent webinar with Trulioo. 

“What we see at PayOS is this phenomenon of global agentic commerce,” said Jonathan McGowan. “It’s happening in every region, with every type of use case you could imagine. That’s because giving an agent a way to pay on someone’s behalf or conduct an action financially really changes the landscape of what you can do.”

The frameworks, including KYA, that support the transition represent the next phase of verification: systems that continuously authenticate, monitor and adapt in real time as the digital economy grows more automated.

Ultimately, the success of agentic commerce depends on more than innovation. It will rely on the ability to see, verify and understand what’s happening behind every transaction. Provenance, accountability and explainability must evolve alongside the technology itself.

The Broader Context: Trust in 2026

The rise of AI agents is one of several forces transforming digital identity, all of which are outlined in the Trulioo 2026 trends report. It’s part of a larger movement that blends AI, automation, fraud detection and regulatory change into a single challenge and opportunity.

The report explores how efficiency and adaptability are reshaping trust across every layer of the digital economy. It looks at how frameworks such as KYA fit into a broader landscape where identity, compliance and innovation must move together.

As digital commerce becomes increasingly automated, success will depend on the ability to verify not just people and businesses, but also the intelligent systems acting for them.

Agentic commerce is coming fast. The question is whether trust can keep pace.