Johannesburg: Techz News Desk – Anita Bosman
Cloudflare Inc., the leading connectivity cloud company, announced that it is working with the world’s largest payments companies to create an authentication layer for agentic commerce. This industry-wide collaboration leverages the Web Bot Auth protocol, enabling AI agents to shop at millions of merchants globally.
Cloudflare and Visa have worked together to develop and introduce the Trusted Agent Protocol, a new protocol that enables payment networks to integrate Web Bot Auth and allows merchants to securely and transparently engage with the next generation of AI-driven shopping agents. Visa is incorporating these new protocols and capabilities into its agentic payment platform, Visa Intelligent Commerce. Cloudflare is also working with Mastercard and American Express to leverage Web Bot Auth.
Mastercard is incorporating Web Bot Auth into Mastercard Agent Pay, enabling merchants to identify trusted agents and deliver secure and personalized agentic commerce experiences easily. American Express will also leverage Web Bot Auth for use in its agentic commerce program. AI agents built with the Cloudflare Agents SDK will soon be able to use these protocols to shop autonomously at millions of merchants globally.
Agentic commerce is an emerging form of online shopping where AI agents act as a personal shopper on a consumer’s behalf, handling the entire buying process from start to finish. It is creating extraordinary opportunities for consumers and merchants but also introduces new challenges. Merchants now need robust systems to reliably differentiate between trusted AI agents and malicious bots, while also providing a seamless experience to their customers.
Leveraging Web Bot Auth for Agentic Commerce
Web Bot Auth, proposed earlier this year, allows bots and agents to authenticate themselves, and can now be used for agentic commerce. With its use in the Trusted Agent Protocol, merchants can determine the identity and intent of agent traffic and securely accept any payment method from an agent, such as credit, debit, crypto and others. Through compatibility and interoperability with all major agentic frameworks, Web Bot Auth creates an authentication layer which will empower merchants and developers to safely deploy agentic commerce at Internet-scale.
Stephanie Cohen, Chief Strategy Officer, Cloudflare: “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. 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.”
Jack Forestell, Chief Product and Strategy Officer, Visa: “As AI agents begin to transact on behalf of consumers, a new era of commerce is emerging – one that demands trust, transparency, security, and industry collaboration. Merchants shouldn’t have to choose between blocking bots and serving real customers – Trusted Agent Protocol helps solve that.”
Jorn Lambert, Chief Product Officer, Mastercard: “Agents have the potential to enable a much more seamless shopping experience, but this will only be possible if the agent can be trusted and if merchants have the tools they need to easily support this new era of commerce. In collaboration with industry players like Cloudflare, we are simplifying agent verification for merchants and ensuring a unified approach to agentic commerce that is scalable, secure, and widely adopted.”
Luke Gebb, EVP & Head of Global Innovation, American Express: “American Express is excited to utilize Cloudflare’s Web Bot Auth Protocol to help merchants identify trusted agents and deliver secure agentic commerce experiences. Trust and accountability are at the core of what we do, and this collaboration continues our commitment to ensuring safety and confidence in every digital interaction.”
The following partners have provided feedback on utilizing Web Bot Auth for agentic commerce and will continue to evolve the framework together: Adyen, Checkout.com, Circle, Fiserv, Microsoft, Nuvei, Shopify, Webflow, and Worldpay.
Securing Agent-to-Merchant Connectivity
Cloudflare and payment companies will leverage Web Bot Auth to support the adoption of agentic commerce, allowing merchants to grant access to legitimate AI agents, while stopping fraudulent traffic at the front door. Merchants will be able to:
• Understand customers’ intent: Agents can communicate and verify their intent in order to gather product details or purchase an item or service.
• Maintain personal relationships with customers: Merchants can determine if a customer has an existing account or shopping history, even if an agent is initiating a purchase on the customer’s behalf.
• Process payments from agents: Agents can use various payment methods, including credit, debit, crypto, or others, to complete a purchase.
Cloudflare has also contributed to open protocols such as the Agent Payments Protocol, introduced the Cloudflare NET Dollar, and is establishing the x402 Foundation with Coinbase – all of which will help to accelerate agentic commerce across the Internet.
