Verifiable Intent (VI) vs Visa Trusted Agent Protocol (TAP)
The map lists them as complementary: sites and agents commonly implement both. They answer different questions: Verifiable Intent is a step 9 (Account) standard, Visa Trusted Agent Protocol step 2 (Identify), so they are not substitutes.
| Verifiable Intent VI | Visa Trusted Agent Protocol TAP | |
|---|---|---|
| Lifecycle step | 9 Account: Prove what happened; be judged | 2 Identify: Who is this agent? Who is this site? |
| 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? | How does a merchant recognize that an approved commerce agent, rather than a crawler or fraudulent bot, is interacting with its site or API? |
| Governed by | Mastercard; contributed to the FIDO Alliance Payments TWG (2026-04-28); built on FIDO Alliance, EMVCo, IETF and W3C primitives | Visa (single-vendor specification, published for merchant/developer adoption) |
| Status (issuer's words) | Draft (v0.1); open-sourced specification and reference implementation | Active vendor-led merchant specification |
| Version | 0.1-draft (2026-02-18) | Current merchant specification, 2026, published on Visa Developer |
| Form / transport | document format | HTTP header |
| Found at | none | /keys |
| Implementation | prototype | prototype — Visa's own launch announcement, naming ecosystem participants including Cloudflare |
| Evidence | 4 verified | 2 verified, 2 reported |
| Primary use case | Let agents buy on behalf of a person | Prove an agent's identity |
| Last verified | 2026-10-23 (current) | 2026-10-23 (current) |
| Specification | https://verifiableintent.dev/spec/ | https://developer.visa.com/capabilities/trusted-agent-protocol/trusted-agent-protocol-specifications |
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 Visa Trusted Agent Protocol when your question is “How does a merchant recognize that an approved commerce agent, rather than a crawler or fraudulent bot, is interacting with its site or API?” and you accept its maturity: status "Active vendor-led merchant specification", implementation prototype (Visa's own launch announcement, naming ecosystem participants including Cloudflare).
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?
- Visa Trusted Agent Protocol: How does a merchant recognize that an approved commerce agent, rather than a crawler or fraudulent bot, is interacting with its site or API?