Agentic Commerce Pushes ‘Know Your Human’ Into Verification Processes

Artificial intelligence (AI) in the service of agentic commerce searches for products, compares prices, negotiates terms and, in some cases with agents, executes transactions on behalf of individuals and businesses. Payment approvals, merchant onboarding and recurring bill pay are increasingly embedded in automated decision loops.

That acceleration alters the urgency of identity controls, and also who and what is being verified, and when.

The commercial urgency of that balance is becoming visible beyond payments. In just one example, The Wall Street Journal on Thursday (Feb 26) reported that Sam Altman’s human verification startup, Tools for Humanity, is working with major consumer brands to promote its World ID product as a “proof of human” tool designed to distinguish real people from bots in digital interactions.

As AI agents become more capable of mimicking human behavior, independent verification of personhood is emerging as a competitive requirement.

Know Your Customer (KYC) and Know Your Business (KYB) were designed to verify that a person or business exists and satisfies regulatory requirements.

But now, in an environment where software initiates transactions, the central question shifts to whether the action reflects verified human intent.

The evolution is sequential. KYC confirms the customer. KYB confirms the business. Know Your Agent (KYA), as articulated by Trulioo, and discussed in recent months by PYMNTS, confirms the agent is acting on behalf of either a customer or a business. By extension, there’s another bit of knowing that adds layers of safety and trust: “Know your human” brings those layers together by ensuring that a real person authorized the instruction and that the agent executing it remains within that delegation.

The Cost of ‘Good Enough’ Identity

The PYMNTS Intelligence report done in collaboration with Trulioo, “The Hidden Costs of ‘Good Enough’: Identity Verification in the Age of Bots and Agents,” details the strain on existing controls. Surveying 350 global companies, the study found that firms lose an average 3.1% of annual revenue due to gaps in digital identity systems, including fraud, misidentification and compliance failures. In aggregate, that equates to $94.9 billion in annual losses among respondents.

More than half of surveyed firms, 56.3%, said they face threats tied to bots or agents. Meanwhile, 58.6% reported struggling with bot-fueled fraud, and more than four in 10 experienced incidents or losses linked to adversarial bots and agents.

Yet 96.3% said they were confident in their ability to detect harmful bots. That divergence between perception and outcome illustrates the limits of static onboarding checks and other verification processes in an age of increasing automation.

From KYC to KYA to Know Your Human

In an interview with PYMNTS, Trulioo Chief Product Officer Zac Cohen framed KYA as a natural extension of compliance standards.

“We want to understand who the agents are,” he said. “We want to make sure that they carry the instructions and the prompts of the individual specifically of how they should be.”

He also identified liability as a gating issue for agentic commerce. “That’s the big sticking point for a lot of these transactions to really take off,” Cohen said.

KYC establishes that a person exists and has been verified. KYA establishes that a digital agent is authorized to act. Know your human ensures that the chain between those two remains intact across every transaction. It connects identity, delegated authority and real-time behavioral signals into a single accountability framework.

Proof of Personhood and the Intent Layer

In agentic commerce, an AI system may possess valid login credentials and an authenticated payment token. It may even pass traditional KYC checks. Yet it could still execute an instruction that the human principal did not explicitly approve, did not fully understand or did not intend to delegate.

Know your human initiatives would require continuous validation that the individual remains in control of the delegation. That includes confirming that consent was informed, that agent permissions are bounded by clear parameters and that transactions fall within expected behavioral patterns. It also means preserving traceability so that disputes, chargebacks and refunds can be resolved with clarity around responsibility.

Tokenization as Structural Support

Tokenization reinforces that structure. By replacing primary account numbers with non-sensitive tokens, payment networks reduce the exposure of raw credentials and constrain how those credentials can be used. Tokens can be domain-restricted to a specific merchant, device or channel.

When combined with strong identity proofing and agent verification, tokenization embeds know your human into the transaction flow. A token issued after KYC can be linked to verified attributes, device intelligence and agent permissions. If an AI agent initiates a payment, systems can evaluate whether the token, device and agent authorization remain consistent with the verified human profile. Rather than re-authenticating raw credentials each time, systems can evaluate whether the token is being used within its approved parameters, allowing continuous validation without introducing delay.

At scale, that architecture supports high-velocity commerce while preserving traceable linkage between the human principal, the delegated agent and the specific payment instrument in use.

The data suggests that integrated identity systems produce measurable improvements. PYMNTS Intelligence and Trulioo found that among companies using globally integrated identity platforms, 65.6% reported lower digital transaction decline rates over the past 12 months, and 62.5% reported declines in false positives. Lower false declines preserve revenue. Lower false positives strengthen trust.

Building Momentum for Agentic Commerce

Agentic commerce will continue to advance because it promises efficiency and scale. PYMNTS research has found that one-third of U.S. consumers have used or would use generative AI for shopping. The verification stack must evolve in parallel.

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