Six U.S. and foreign banks this week released a set of principles for building consumer and merchant trust in artificial intelligence agents used in commerce.
The banks – which include Bank of America and Capital One – note that many consumers are unclear whether AI agents will act in their best interests.
“They are concerned that AI agents may buy the wrong thing or spend too much – or even worse, lose their money to scams and fraud,” the banks said. “They are not sure whether they will be protected or who they will need to go to if things go wrong.
“Additionally, merchants are concerned that disputes and chargebacks may increase for reasons outside their control,” they added. “They also worry that they may lose their connection to consumers, and that they may have to choose between higher costs and losing sales.”
The banks proposed five principles to guide the development and rollout of AI agents:
- AI agents should be transparent with the consumers and merchants they serve and other agentic commerce service providers they interact with.
- Consumers and merchants should be able to transact safely in agentic commerce, supported by a value chain that works together to manage and reduce risk.
- Consumer and merchant safety and consent should determine how agentic commerce data is created, preserved, accessed and used.
- Consumers and merchants should be able to choose which agentic commerce services they use, without unreasonable restrictions.
- Consumers and merchants should benefit from connectivity across the agentic commerce ecosystem.
The banks said they plan to elaborate on the principles in a future paper and will solicit input from stakeholders.
