European payment firms team up to set rules for AI shopping agents

A group of European payment companies has formed a council to set rules for AI shopping agents. These are programs that can pick products and complete purchases on your behalf. The group is called the Local Payments Council for Agentic Commerce, and it wants the rules in place as these tools become more common in retail.

What changed

The founding members include PPRO from the UK, BLIK from Poland and Bancontact from Belgium. The European Payments Initiative, which built the EU-wide digital wallet Wero, is in too. So is DIAS, Greece's national payment clearing house.

The council plans to set standards for how users authorize an AI agent and how banks verify it. It also wants to cover how agents identify merchants, and how disputes and refunds work when an agent made the purchase.

Why local payment methods matter

The council has one extra goal. It wants domestic European payment methods built into AI shopping platforms from the start. The concern is that agents may influence which payment method a shopper ends up using.

Digital-first options, including stablecoins, may be fairly easy to add to agent wallets. That could pressure local providers to make their systems just as easy for AI platforms to use. The article says this may take extra infrastructure and coordination.

Other groups are working on this too

• A group of banks, including Bank of America, Capital One, NatWest and ING, is developing safeguards against scams, fraud and privacy breaches.
• Visa, Mastercard and Ant International are working on Know Your Agent standards to verify and monitor AI agents.

The risks are not theoretical. Reports say major U.S. banks have already spotted unauthorized third-party AI agents working inside customer accounts. Even agents acting for real customers can create weak spots at banks without proper safeguards.

What is not known yet

The article gives no timeline and no published rules. It does not say whether the standards will be required or optional, or when shoppers might see changes. For now, this is the industry preparing, not a finished system.