Ant International has partnered with Visa and Mastercard to develop common standards for identifying and monitoring AI agents as autonomous software takes on a larger role in global payments.

Ant International said Thursday that the companies will work on an interoperable “Know Your Agent” framework designed to let merchants and payment providers verify which AI agents are behind transactions and whether they are authorized to act.

The work comes as payment companies prepare for AI systems that can search for products, place orders and make payments for consumers and businesses. Ant cited McKinsey projections that AI agents could handle between $3 trillion and $5 trillion of global consumer commerce by 2030.

Jiang-Ming Yang, chief innovation officer at Ant International, said safeguards will be needed as agents gain more authority over financial transactions because AI systems can produce incorrect information or take actions users did not intend.

“Trust is the foundation of the AI transformation,” Yang told CNBC.

Ant, Visa and Mastercard target a common AI agent identity system

Under the collaboration, Ant International, Visa and Mastercard plan to establish common methods for linking an AI agent to a valid entity, evaluating its behavior and monitoring its activity.

The companies are focusing on interoperability between their separate systems so an agent that has already established its identity with one payment provider would not necessarily have to repeat the process with another.

“If [an] agent registers with Ant, they don’t need to register again with Visa, Mastercard,” Yang said.

Such a system would give merchants and payment processors a consistent way to determine which software agent is requesting a transaction and the party on whose behalf it is operating.

Pablo Fourez, chief digital officer at Mastercard, said interoperability between Know Your Agent frameworks will be needed if agentic commerce is to operate across different platforms.

“Interoperability across Know-Your-Agent frameworks is essential to making agentic commerce work at scale,” Fourez said, stressing the need for merchants and payment companies to consistently identify AI agents they can trust.

Each of the three companies has spent the past year developing its own technology for AI-led payments. Mastercard on Wednesday launched Agent Connect, a system that gives merchants a single integration for product discovery, cart creation and customer-approved payments across AI shopping platforms.

Agent Connect works with Mastercard Agent Pay, which records customer authority through tokenized permissions when an AI system is allowed to make a purchase. Merchants and payment providers can use the permission to determine whether the transaction falls within instructions provided by the customer.

Visa and Mastercard have been building their own agent payment rails

Visa has been developing a separate stack for autonomous payments. In April, the company introduced Intelligent Commerce Connect, bringing payment initiation, tokenization, authentication and spending controls into infrastructure designed for AI agents.

The system allows agents to search for products and complete transactions on behalf of consumers while using Visa’s existing payment network and security tools.

Visa expanded that work in June with new AI and stablecoin capabilities, including a partnership with OpenAI to support payments within agentic commerce experiences. Its stablecoin settlement activity had reached a $7 billion annualized run rate at the time, crypto.news previously reported.

Mastercard has taken a similar route through Agent Pay for Machines. The company unveiled the payment network in June with support from more than 30 payment, blockchain and technology companies, including Ripple, Coinbase, Stripe, Adyen and the Solana Foundation.

The network was built for transactions initiated by autonomous software, including high-volume and low-value payments. Users can set spending limits, authorization requirements and settlement conditions, while transactions can run through conventional payment networks or stablecoin rails.

Both card companies have consequently been developing controls for a payment environment in which the person buying a product may not directly interact with the merchant’s checkout page.

Ant brings more than 50 digital wallets into agentic commerce push

Ant International gives the collaboration access to another part of the global payments market through Alipay+, its cross-border payment and digitalization platform.

More than 50 electronic wallets have partnered with Ant International through Alipay+, according to the company. Such wallets are widely used in markets where consumers frequently rely on mobile payment systems instead of physical credit or debit cards.

Digital wallets represented 56% of global e-commerce transaction value and 33% of point-of-sale value in 2025, according to Worldpay data cited by the companies. Total spending through the payment method exceeded $13 trillion.

Card networks and digital wallets have become increasingly connected as wallets add support for cards and other funding sources, giving AI payment systems multiple routes through which transactions could eventually be completed.

Visa has already been testing combinations of AI payments and blockchain-based settlement. Wirex joined Visa’s Agentic Ready program in June to test AI agents making stablecoin payments, initially focusing on software subscriptions, marketing spending and procurement.

The tests were designed to determine how autonomous software could initiate financial transactions while preserving security controls and user authority.

Stablecoins have become another part of the infrastructure being developed for machine-led transactions. Visa and Artemis said in July that stablecoins could be suited to low-value machine-to-machine payments, while traditional cards could continue handling consumer purchases.

Alipay is already letting users automate Starbucks orders

Ant’s work on payment standards is arriving as its former parent company’s Alipay platform begins putting AI-assisted purchasing tools in front of consumers.

Ant International separated from Hangzhou-based Ant Group nearly three years ago. Ant Group operates Alipay, the mobile payment service widely used in mainland China.

Alipay said Wednesday that users can now create recurring Starbucks requests through one of its AI features.

A customer can instruct the app to “buy me a Starbucks iced Americano at 10 a.m. every day,” according to the announcement. The system can then place the requested order at the scheduled time before asking the customer to complete payment.

The arrangement keeps the payment approval with the user even though the AI feature handles the recurring order.

Alipay users can make recurring ride-hailing requests from Didi through the same AI tool, extending the automated system from retail purchases to transportation services.

Hardware wallet makers Trezor and BitBox have warned users about phishing emails disguised as urgent security notices after suspected compromises involving third party email services.

Trezor said on Wednesday that its email provider had been breached and warned users not to interact with a fraudulent message titled “Critical Security Alert: STM32 Entropy Vulnerability.” The company told recipients not to click any links in the email.

BitBox issued a similar warning the same day after users received a phishing email impersonating the company. Its preliminary review found that its newsletter provider was likely compromised, with several Bitcoin companies appearing to have been targeted through a provider they shared.

Trezor phishing email claims entropy vulnerability

The fraudulent Trezor email presented the supposed STM32 entropy vulnerability as a security problem requiring users to take action.

Trezor rejected the message and confirmed that it was a phishing attempt. The company said the affected third party email provider had been breached, while its warning focused on preventing recipients from following links contained in the message.

The phishing campaign comes after a real entropy related vulnerability affected another hardware wallet maker earlier this year. A Coldcard firmware flaw disclosed in July involved weak random number generation that could result in vulnerable wallet seeds.

The Coldcard issue stemmed from a build configuration error that caused affected devices to use a software pseudorandom number generator instead of the intended hardware random number generator. The vulnerability affected Coldcard Mk3 firmware dating back to March 2021.

Attackers later exploited the weakness to identify wallets created with vulnerable seeds. An attack on July 31 initially moved 594 BTC worth approximately $38 million from around 500 addresses, with later analysis connecting more addresses and Bitcoin to the same vulnerability.

As crypto.news previously reported, the Coldcard security incident prompted Kraken Chief Security Officer Nick Percoco to call for independent audits of hardware wallet seed generation. Coinkite released firmware fixes, but wallets created using vulnerable seeds still required users to generate new seed phrases and move their Bitcoin.

BitBox said in July that its devices were not affected by the random number generation vulnerability.

BitBox points to newsletter provider compromise

BitBox said its preliminary investigation indicated that its newsletter provider was likely compromised after phishing emails impersonating the hardware wallet company reached users.

The company found that several other Bitcoin businesses had been targeted and appeared to use the same newsletter provider. BitBox warned subscribers about the phishing attempt while continuing to investigate the incident.

The phishing campaign followed a separate BitBox security disclosure in August, when the company patched two firmware flaws affecting its hardware wallets.

One of the vulnerabilities could have allowed malicious firmware to be installed under certain conditions. The second involved Bitcoin address handling and could have affected how addresses were verified.

BitBox said there was no known exploitation of either vulnerability and no user funds were reported stolen. Updated firmware was released to address both issues.

Hardware wallet users have faced attacks that do not require compromising the devices themselves. Some campaigns instead rely on impersonating wallet manufacturers and persuading users to disclose recovery information.

In February, attackers sent physical letters impersonating Trezor and Ledger and directed recipients to scan QR codes for supposed authentication or transaction checks.

The hardware wallet phishing campaign used official looking letters and deadlines to create urgency. The QR codes directed users to malicious websites that requested 12, 20 or 24 word recovery phrases under the pretense of verifying wallet ownership.

Anyone who obtains a recovery phrase can recreate the associated wallet and control its funds. Trezor and Ledger said legitimate hardware wallet providers do not ask users to enter, scan, upload or share recovery phrases through websites or other external channels.

Trezor customer data breach affected more than 80,000 users

Trezor’s latest phishing warning follows separate disclosures involving customer information held by its shipping provider ShipMonk.

On Aug. 13, Trezor disclosed that unauthorized access to ShipMonk systems had exposed data belonging to 13,689 customers.

The initial disclosure covered 11,742 customers whose names, email addresses, phone numbers and shipping addresses were exposed. Another 1,947 customers had their names, cities and email addresses compromised.

Trezor said its own systems were not breached and its hardware wallets, private keys and recovery phrases remained secure. The company warned that the exposed customer information could be used for more convincing phishing and impersonation attempts.

The ShipMonk incident was mentioned in previous coverage of the BitBox firmware vulnerabilities, alongside another customer data exposure involving hardware wallet maker SafePal. Neither incident compromised the companies’ hardware wallets or recovery phrases.

Trezor expanded its ShipMonk disclosure on Sept. 4 after learning that another approximately 67,000 U.S. customers were affected.

The additional records belonged to customers who placed orders between November 2019 and August 2021 and included names, email addresses, phone numbers, shipping addresses and order numbers.

Combined with the customers identified in August, the expanded disclosure brought the number affected by the ShipMonk breach to more than 80,000.

Trezor said it had previously received assurances that the older customer information had been deleted from ShipMonk’s systems. The company learned on Sept. 2 that the records had remained stored by the shipping provider.

Hardware wallet phishing has taken several forms

Trezor has dealt with phishing attempts through other communication channels before the latest email provider incident.

In June 2025, attackers abused the company’s contact form by submitting requests using targeted users’ email addresses. Trezor’s system then generated automated responses that appeared to come from its legitimate support infrastructure.

The Trezor contact form attack allowed the phishing messages to appear more credible because recipients received communications associated with the company’s support process.

Trezor said at the time that its internal email infrastructure had not been breached. The company warned users that it would never request their wallet backup and said recovery information should remain private and offline.

The phishing attempts targeting Trezor and BitBox this week instead led both companies to point to third party email services. BitBox said several Bitcoin companies appeared to have been targeted through a shared newsletter provider, while Trezor confirmed that its email provider had been breached.

Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong said on Sept. 9 that the exchange is building a financial account for AI, while company documentation shows that agents can already access isolated portfolios and execute supported trades.

Armstrong disclosed the project while responding to Ruby on Rails creator David Heinemeier Hansson, commonly known as DHH. Hansso asked which company would build the first “agentic bank” where a machine could receive an allowance and permission to manage routine expenses.

“Coinbase is building the financial account for AI,” Armstrong responded. The brief statement did not provide a launch date, product name, fee structure or regulatory details. It should therefore be treated as a description of Coinbase’s direction rather than confirmation of a new banking product.

Coinbase’s current documentation supplies more detail. Coinbase for Agents is already available as a trading connection between supported AI applications and Coinbase Advanced Trade. The service uses a remote Model Context Protocol server or a local command-line interface.

Unicoin has sued Uniswap Labs in New York federal court, seeking declarations that its UNICOIN brand does not infringe Uniswap’s trademarks and asking the court to cancel Uniswap’s federal UNI trademark registration.

Unicoin said in a Sept. 8 complaint shared with crypto.news and filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York that the dispute followed months of demands from Uniswap, which accused the company of trademark infringement, dilution, cybersquatting and unfair competition. Uniswap had known about Unicoin for at least two years before making its first trademark claims in June, according to the filing.

The lawsuit asks the court to rule that Unicoin can continue using its name and unicorn logo without infringing the UNISWAP, UNI or UNICHAIN marks. Unicoin is separately challenging U.S. Trademark Registration No. 7,307,721 for UNI, arguing that the term is generic or, at most, descriptive without acquired distinctiveness.

Unicoin lawsuit targets Uniswap’s UNI trademark

The dispute began with a June 3 letter from Uniswap’s lawyers demanding that Unicoin permanently stop using UNICOIN and other names containing UNI in connection with cryptocurrency, blockchain, decentralized finance or a decentralized ecosystem.

Uniswap demanded the transfer of unicoin.com and unicoin.org, an accounting of Unicoin’s revenue and profits, reimbursement of its legal fees and an agreement preventing future use or registration of the disputed marks, according to the complaint.

Unicoin rejected the demands on June 23, telling Uniswap that it had independently developed the UNICOIN name and had continuously used it since 2021. Its lawyers argued that the brands had different appearances and commercial meanings and that widespread use of the UNI prefix weakened Uniswap’s claim to exclusive rights over it.

Uniswap rejected that response on July 17 and maintained that UNICOIN was likely to cause confusion with UNISWAP, UNI and UNICHAIN. It warned that it would consider other legal remedies if the matter was not resolved to its satisfaction.

Another exchange followed before Uniswap sent a final letter on Aug. 14. The complaint said Uniswap again demanded the removal of references to the UNICOIN token and told the company it would not continue the back and forth, while warning that legal remedies remained available.

Unicoin has now asked the court to settle the dispute before Uniswap brings an infringement case.

Unicoin says UNI is too common for exclusive protection

A central part of Unicoin’s case challenges the strength of the UNI mark itself.

Uniswap owns a federal registration for UNI covering technology used to issue cryptocurrency tokens that holders can use to vote on and govern a blockchain protocol. The registration lists Sept. 16, 2020 as the first commercial use date and was registered in February 2024.

Unicoin argues that “uni” is a common prefix derived from the Latin word unus, meaning “one,” and appears in words ranging from unit and union to universe, university and unicorn. Its complaint says more than 3,600 registrations in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office database contain UNI, with approximately 1,000 currently live.

The company extended that argument to crypto, identifying several projects that use UNI or names beginning with the same letters. It said multiple unrelated cryptocurrencies have traded under the UNI ticker, while projects including Unibot, Unifi Protocol DAO, UniLend Finance and Unibright use similar naming conventions. Some UNI-formative crypto projects cited in the complaint predate Uniswap’s September 2020 governance token.

Unicoin wants the court to cancel Uniswap’s UNI registration on the grounds that UNI is generic or merely descriptive without secondary meaning and fails to function as an identifier of a single source. Because the registration is less than five years old, the complaint argues that it has not become incontestable under federal trademark law.

Unicoin disputes risk of consumer confusion

Unicoin has based another part of its case on differences between the two companies’ products and branding.

Its complaint describes UNICOIN as an asset-backed cryptocurrency marketed under the tagline “The Smart Coin for Smart People,” while Uniswap operates a decentralized exchange tied to its UNI governance token and Unichain blockchain. Unicoin said it had withdrawn plans for a separate governance token under the UNICOIN name and renamed a planned proprietary blockchain so it no longer used a UNI prefix.

The filing makes a similar distinction between the names themselves, arguing that UNICOIN refers to a digital coin, UNISWAP conveys trading or exchange, and UNICHAIN refers to blockchain infrastructure.

Unicoin said years of marketing by both companies had produced no known cases in which consumers asked whether it was connected with Uniswap. It claimed to have sold to thousands of investors and coinholders in more than 100 countries while spending millions of dollars on advertising, including Times Square billboards, buses, taxis and major industry events.

The complaint includes a side-by-side comparison of the companies’ unicorn logos on page 14. Unicoin describes its design as angular and made from sharp lines, compared with the curved unicorn imagery used by Uniswap.

Trademark fight comes before Unicoin offering

Unicoin claims the timing of Uniswap’s demands is significant because they arrived shortly before its planned public offering.

The company said Uniswap founder Hayden Adams had publicly commented on Unicoin in May 2024, showing that Uniswap knew about the business more than two years before sending its first infringement letter. According to the complaint, Adams wrote that Unicoin should face scrutiny from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Unicoin characterized the comment as evidence of personal hostility, an allegation Uniswap has not yet answered in the case.

The SEC later brought its own case against Unicoin. As crypto.news previously reported, the regulator sued the company and several executives in May 2025, accusing them of raising more than $100 million through allegedly misleading and unregistered securities offerings. Unicoin CEO Alex Konanykhin denied the allegations and said the company would fight the case.

Uniswap has faced separate litigation and regulatory disputes. In March, a federal judge dismissed a class action that sought to hold Uniswap Labs responsible for alleged scam tokens and rug pulls traded through its protocol. Judge Katherine Polk Failla dismissed the remaining claims with prejudice after earlier federal securities claims had been rejected.

A separate intellectual-property case brought by Bancor-linked entities ended in Uniswap’s favor in February after they accused the company of infringing patents covering technology used in automated decentralized trading. The patent infringement case concerned the constant product automated market maker technology used by the protocol.

Uniswap had previously faced SEC scrutiny over allegations that it facilitated unregistered securities trading and operated as an unregistered broker-dealer. The agency ended its Uniswap investigation without taking enforcement action in February 2025.

In its latest lawsuit, Unicoin is seeking five forms of substantive relief covering non-infringement, dilution, cancellation of the UNI registration, cybersquatting and unfair competition. It wants declarations allowing continued use of UNICOIN and its domains, cancellation of Uniswap’s UNI registration and an award of reasonable attorney fees and costs. Unicoin has demanded a jury trial on issues eligible to be tried by a jury.