EMVCo's first draft framework for card-based agentic payments treats consumer authority as durable, shared state. That is a more useful design target than attaching a vague “agentic” label to an otherwise ordinary checkout.
What The Draft Proposes
On September 1, 2026, EMVCo opened public review of its Agentic Payments framework. The comment period runs through September 30.
The proposal concentrates on authority that must survive across time and participants: recurring purchases, cumulative budgets, and post-transaction activity. Its proposed Intent Services would provide a shared layer for registering, referencing, retrieving, and managing consumer-authorised intent throughout that lifecycle.
Why A Payment Token Is Not Enough
A credential can establish that a caller may present a payment instrument. It does not by itself express what the buyer allowed the agent to buy, the budget remaining, whether the mandate expired, or what happens after settlement.
EMVCo's coordination layer is meant to complement cryptographic assurance, not replace it. The draft separates proof that an intent record is authentic from the shared state needed for participants to interpret that intent consistently.
What To Model Now
- Record the human principal and the agent acting under the mandate.
- Define merchant, category, amount, cadence, and cumulative limits explicitly.
- Make expiry, revocation, amendment, and remaining budget queryable state.
- Bind each authorization decision and transaction to the intent version used.
- Keep refunds, disputes, and post-transaction actions inside the same audit trail.
Scope And Limits
The document is a framework for possible future specifications. EMVCo says later work may consider Know Your Agent capabilities and Agentic Transaction Indicators, so neither is a finished requirement here. The announcement also does not establish implementation by card networks, issuers, acquirers, or merchants.
The practical signal is still important: payment infrastructure is beginning to model delegated intent as a lifecycle with state, participants, and retrieval rules. Builders can adopt that discipline without pretending the draft is already a standard.
Related: Read our field notes on first-class agent identity and scoped authority and the longer guide to agentic commerce and machine-to-machine payments.