Cloudflare has partnered with Visa, Mastercard, and American Express to help shape the future of digital payments through a secure foundation for “agentic commerce.” The collaboration aims to develop authentication systems that enable trusted software agents to make purchases and payments autonomously—while protecting merchants from fraudulent bots.

Cloudflare Positions Itself at the Core of Autonomous Commerce

In a Tuesday statement, Cloudflare said the companies will adopt Web Bot Auth, a protocol that lets autonomous agents verify their identities before completing transactions. Visa is co-developing a Trusted Agent Protocol to integrate Web Bot Auth into its Visa Intelligent Commerce platform. Meanwhile, Mastercard will integrate the protocol into Mastercard Agent Pay, and American Express plans to apply it to its own agentic commerce systems.

According to Cloudflare, agents built with its Agents SDK will use these authentication layers to complete payments autonomously. The system helps merchants distinguish between verified agents and malicious bots, while supporting multiple payment methods, including credit, debit, and cryptocurrency.

Stephanie Cohen, Cloudflare’s Chief Strategy Officer, said the company is positioning itself at the center of the shift toward secure, autonomous transactions.

The future of commerce is agentic, and Cloudflare is building the trusted foundation for it. 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.

Stephanie Cohen

Backed by its global network, Cloudflare aims to establish trust protocols that enable AI-driven agents to transact safely, paving the way for a new era of secure, decentralized digital commerce.

Visa and Mastercard Advance Trusted Framework for Secure Agent-Based Commerce

Visa described the collaboration as a strategic move to build trust in the emerging landscape of autonomous transactions. The company stated that the Trusted Agent Protocol is designed to ensure that AI-driven commerce operates securely and transparently, enabling merchants to identify verified agents and block malicious bots.

The goal, it added, is to strengthen fraud prevention without disrupting legitimate customer activity. By integrating these authentication standards into Visa Intelligent Commerce, Visa aims to strike a balance between security and a seamless user experience across the growing agent-based payments ecosystem.

Mastercard’s Chief Product Officer, Jorn Lambert, said that verifying agent identities will be critical to the success of agent-based commerce. He noted that autonomous agents have the potential to streamline and accelerate online shopping. Still, widespread adoption will depend on merchants’ ability to trust and support them.

Lambert added that Mastercard’s collaboration with Cloudflare and other industry partners aims to build a unified, secure, and scalable framework to make agent-based payments viable across global markets.

Cloudflare Builds Industry Consensus on Secure Agent-to-Merchant Transactions

American Express also highlighted the growing importance of trust as agentic commerce evolves. Luke Gebb, executive vice president and head of global innovation at the company, said American Express will integrate Cloudflare’s Web Bot Auth Protocol to help merchants verify legitimate agents and ensure secure, transparent transactions.

Gebb noted that the effort reflects the firm’s broader commitment to building confidence and accountability across new digital payment systems.

Cloudflare added that partners, including Adyen, Checkout.com, Circle, Fiserv, Microsoft, Nuvei, Shopify, Webflow, and Worldpay, are providing feedback on Web Bot Auth. It also pointed to ongoing projects—including the Agent Payments Protocol, Cloudflare NET Dollar, and the x402Foundation with Coinbase—as part of its broader effort to accelerate secure agent-to-merchant transactions.