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The rise of AI-powered personal shopping agents, known as agentic commerce, presents a new frontier for online retail but also introduces significant security challenges for merchants. To address this, Cloudflare has announced a major industry collaboration with the world's largest payments companies, including Visa, Mastercard, and American Express. The initiative leverages the Web Bot Auth protocol to create a universal authentication layer, enabling merchants to securely identify and transact with trusted AI agents at a global scale while blocking malicious bots.
Quick Intel
Cloudflare is partnering with Visa, Mastercard, and American Express on agentic commerce.
The collaboration uses the Web Bot Auth protocol to authenticate AI shopping agents.
Visa introduced the Trusted Agent Protocol, integrating Web Bot Auth for secure payments.
The system allows merchants to differentiate between trusted agents and malicious bots.
AI agents will soon be able to shop autonomously at millions of online merchants.
The initiative aims to build a secure, scalable foundation for the future of AI-driven commerce.
Building a Trusted Foundation for AI Commerce
Agentic commerce allows AI agents to act as personal shoppers, handling the entire buying process on behalf of a consumer. However, this requires merchants to have robust systems to reliably identify legitimate AI activity. The Web Bot Auth protocol, now being integrated by major payment platforms, allows these AI agents to authenticate themselves. This creates a transparent layer where merchants can verify an agent's identity and intent, and securely accept various payment methods, from credit cards to crypto, from an authenticated source.
“The future of commerce is agentic, and Cloudflare is building the trusted foundation for it,” said Stephanie Cohen, Chief Strategy Officer at Cloudflare. “We're directly enabling developers, merchants, and payments companies to innovate, and that starts by ensuring security is not an afterthought—it's built in by design. With our global network, we're uniquely positioned to enable trust protocols that allow AI agents to transact safely, unlocking the next era of digital commerce for everyone.”
Industry-Wide Collaboration and Merchant Benefits
The partnership brings together key players across the payments ecosystem. Visa has developed the Trusted Agent Protocol using Web Bot Auth, which is being incorporated into its Visa Intelligent Commerce platform. Similarly, Mastercard is integrating the protocol into Mastercard Agent Pay, and American Express will use it for its own agentic commerce program. This unified approach, supported by feedback from partners like Shopify, Microsoft, and Worldpay, ensures interoperability and widespread adoption.
“Merchants shouldn’t have to choose between blocking bots and serving real customers—Trusted Agent Protocol helps solve that,” said Jack Forestell, Chief Product and Strategy Officer, Visa.
For merchants, this collaboration translates into tangible capabilities. They will be able to understand an AI agent's shopping intent, maintain personal relationships with customers by recognizing their account history even when an agent is purchasing, and securely process payments from these authenticated agents. By providing a clear way to grant access to legitimate AI agents while stopping fraudulent traffic, this authentication layer is poised to unlock the next era of digital commerce, making it safer and more accessible for all stakeholders.
Cloudflare, Inc. (NYSE: NET) is the leading connectivity cloud company on a mission to help build a better Internet. It empowers organizations to make their employees, applications and networks faster and more secure everywhere, while reducing complexity and cost. Cloudflare’s connectivity cloud delivers the most full-featured, unified platform of cloud-native products and developer tools, so any organization can gain the control they need to work, develop, and accelerate their business.
Powered by one of the world’s largest and most interconnected networks, Cloudflare blocks billions of threats online for its customers every day. It is trusted by millions of organizations—from the largest brands to entrepreneurs and small businesses to nonprofits, humanitarian groups, and governments across the globe.
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