AI Agents Need IDs Too: The KYA (Know Your Agent) Standard War Begins, with Visa, Ethereum, and Trulioo Leading the Charge

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The era of autonomous AI Agent trading has arrived, yet it lacks identity verification standards. KYA (Know Your Agent) has emerged as a new sector, with giants like Visa, Ethereum, and Trulioo racing to launch solutions, while the EU, the US, and Singapore have already initiated regulatory frameworks. This article is sourced from Tiger Research and compiled by Foresight News. (Context: Cathay United Bank can now store Bitcoin! The first pilot program has been approved, targeting high-net-worth clients.) (Background: A turning point for cryptocurrency: 2026, the rules of the game have completely changed.) I. The era of intelligent agents is accelerating, while concerns about the uncontrolled creation and behavior of agents are also growing. Know Your Agent (KYA) systems, which assign identities to agents and regulate their behavior, are receiving increasing attention. Why is KYA identity infrastructure needed? Which companies are building it? - AI Agents have entered an era of autonomously executing contracts, payments, and trading, but there is currently no shared standard to verify "who this agent is." In Agent-to-Agent (A2A) scenarios, KYA is receiving more attention than KYC. - KYA is not required in all scenarios. Within centralized platforms (Google, OpenAI, Coinbase), existing KYC is sufficient. KYA is truly critical in scenarios where independently deployed autonomous agents access DEXs, A2A payments, and merchant payments. - The race for KYA standards has begun: - ERC-8004: Issuing AgentID on top of NFTs to build identity, reputation, and verification systems on-chain. - Visa TAP: Visa issues identity credentials for agents, verifying them through TAP’s triple signature (Legitimacy, Delegator, Payment Method). - Trulioo: Adopting an SSL CA model, where DPA issues DAP. - Sumsub: Layering a KYA system on top of its existing compliance system. Regulation has begun at the national level. The EU AI Act requires that the behavior logs of high-risk AI systems must include the operator's identity. The US NIST has listed agent identity management as a priority standard area. Singapore has released the world's first national-level AI governance framework for agents. Just as the 2019 FATF Travel Rule determined which crypto exchanges could survive, possessing KYA infrastructure will determine who can enter the next round of the market. - Before 1989, there was no unified identification standard in global finance. This gap made it difficult to track drug money and illicit funds. - After the FATF was established in 1989, KYC became a mandatory requirement in the financial sector, blocking illicit funds at the entry point. - AI Agents execute contracts, payments, and trades without human participation, but currently, there is no way to verify "who it is." - In A2A environments, accountability becomes blurred, the risk of disputes rises, and users are exposed to fraud patterns such as money laundering. - KYA (Know Your Agent) is a trust layer that pre-verifies the source, permissions, and accountability of agents. - Unverified agents bring three major risks: unauthorized transactions, fraud, and accountability gaps. - Within centralized platforms, user KYC + platform accountability is sufficient. However, in interoperable scenarios outside platforms, KYA becomes critical for verifying the specific actions and security of agents. - Within a country (inside a platform), one ID card (KYC) is enough to move freely. Once crossing borders (outside a platform), the environment changes, requiring entry screening (KYA) for purpose and trust. - ERC-8004 adds an identity layer on top of ERC-721, minting an NFT for each agent as a unique ID. - It also adds three on-chain registries (Identity, Reputation, Validation) to serve as identity, reputation boards, and verification records, respectively. - ERC-20 (Token Standard): Before standardization, every token required entirely new code. After ERC-20, most major assets were issued on it. - ERC-721 (NFT Standard): CryptoPunks, BAYC, and ENS relied on it to build the NFT market itself. As blockchain integration in the agent era accelerates, ERC-8004 will play the same standard-setting role for Agents. - Visa issues identity credentials (Agent Intent) to agents, similar to an ID card. Without a key, no transaction can occur. Keys are only issued after Visa pre-approval. Each transaction is signed and submitted to the merchant. - Merchants receive three signatures instead of one: Visa approval, the delegator, and the payment method, all confirmed simultaneously. - Just as Visa previously captured payment rails, it is now encapsulating the agent era. - Through Visa Intelligent Commerce (VIC), Visa is

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