Verifiable Intent (VI) vs EMV Agentic Payments – Framework for Specifications
The map lists them as complementary: sites and agents commonly implement both. They answer different questions: Verifiable Intent is a step 9 (Account) standard, EMV Agentic Payments – Framework for Specifications step 7 (Pay), so they are not substitutes.
| Verifiable Intent VI | EMV Agentic Payments – Framework for Specifications EMV Agentic Payments | |
|---|---|---|
| Lifecycle step | 9 Account: Prove what happened; be judged | 7 Pay: Settle the bill |
| Answers | After an agent completes a purchase on a user's behalf, can the merchant, issuer and consumer all point to the same cryptographic record of what the user actually authorized? | When a card network, issuer, merchant, or wallet sees an AI-agent-initiated card payment, how do they consistently find out what the consumer actually authorised — recurring purchase, spending cap, post-transaction change — rather than each building a bespoke, one-off signal? |
| Governed by | Mastercard; contributed to the FIDO Alliance Payments TWG (2026-04-28); built on FIDO Alliance, EMVCo, IETF and W3C primitives | EMVCo, the technical body jointly owned by American Express, Discover, JCB, Mastercard, UnionPay and Visa, which creates and manages the EMV Specifications; this framework is being developed by EMVCo's dedicated Agentic Payments Task Force with input from EMVCo Associates and Subscribers, and in collaboration with the FIDO Alliance, the OpenID Foundation, the OpenWallet Foundation and W3C |
| Status (issuer's words) | Draft (v0.1); open-sourced specification and reference implementation | Draft v1.0, released for public review and comment; EMVCo describes it as ‘a foundation for further industry engagement and potential specification development’, not itself a finished specification |
| Version | 0.1-draft (2026-02-18) | EMV® Agentic Payments – Framework for Specifications, v1.0 DRAFT (2026-08-31) |
| Form / transport | document format | document format |
| Found at | none | none |
| Implementation | prototype | none found |
| Evidence | 4 verified | 4 verified |
| Primary use case | Let agents buy on behalf of a person | Let agents buy on behalf of a person |
| Last verified | 2026-10-23 (current) | 2026-10-23 (current) |
| Specification | https://verifiableintent.dev/spec/ | https://www.emvco.com/resources/emv-agentic-payments-framework-for-specifications-v1-0-draft-comment-period-ends-30-sept-2026/ |
When to use which
- Choose Verifiable Intent when your question is “After an agent completes a purchase on a user's behalf, can the merchant, issuer and consumer all point to the same cryptographic record of what the user actually authorized?” and you accept its maturity: status "Draft (v0.1); open-sourced specification and reference implementation", implementation prototype.
- Choose EMV Agentic Payments – Framework for Specifications when your question is “When a card network, issuer, merchant, or wallet sees an AI-agent-initiated card payment, how do they consistently find out what the consumer actually authorised — recurring purchase, spending cap, post-transaction change — rather than each building a bespoke, one-off signal?” and you accept its maturity: status "Draft v1.0, released for public review and comment; EMVCo describes it as ‘a foundation for further industry engagement and potential specification development’, not itself a finished specification", implementation none found.
Read the full articles
- Verifiable Intent: After an agent completes a purchase on a user's behalf, can the merchant, issuer and consumer all point to the same cryptographic record of what the user actually authorized?
- EMV Agentic Payments – Framework for Specifications: When a card network, issuer, merchant, or wallet sees an AI-agent-initiated card payment, how do they consistently find out what the consumer actually authorised — recurring purchase, spending cap, post-transaction change — rather than each building a bespoke, one-off signal?