Tag Archives: authentication

Is Know Your Agent (KYA) Really Necessary?

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Is “Know Your Agent” (KYA) Really Necessary? The tale of an Orphan Signal

Short Blog | June 2026

A new category of startup has emerged around “Know Your Agent” (KYA) — the idea that merchants and payment platforms need a framework to verify the identity, authority, and auditability of AI agents acting on behalf of consumers. PYMNTS has covered the space extensively, and KnowYourAgent.xyz is already pitching merchants on “identity, policy controls, and evidence for every AI-agent transaction at checkout.” The framing is intuitive: if a bot is buying something, shouldn’t you know who sent it?

I want to push back — not on the problem, but on whether KYA, as a standalone service category, is the right solution.

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DPCs Great Idea with a Long Way To Go

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© Starpoint LLP, 2026. No part of this site, blog.starpointllp.com, may be reproduced or retransmitted, in whole or in part, in any manner without the permission of the copyright owner. Also, see our Legal/Disclaimer (this is a highly opinionated and partially informed blog). Enterprise readers, please consider an Enterprise Subscription (not required for Starpoint Clients). 

Executive Summary

I’m fortunate to chat with a diversity of large payment network stakeholders. As most of you know, I view the challenge in payments more from a political/incentive viewpoint than a technical one. The alphabet soup of new standards is hard to keep up with, but be assured that each one has a proponent (who benefits) and a group of resistors. Innovation in a network is hard, as existing stakeholders have built assets and competitive positions based upon how things work today. Today’s blog covers DPCs. DPCs may not be the biggest threat, but they are the newest. I’m not going to attempt a deep tech dive into DPCs; my effort is focused more on the challenges faced by any new payment innovation to gain traction and scale. Network effects are hard to beat!

Why read this blog? My readers know I view identity and authentication as part of the core “bundle” of payments, and Visa/MA are the de facto identity infrastructure of the internet because they unlock the power of banks (ie KYC) within a commercial framework with active governance. Today we are breaking down the latest “threat”: Digital Payment Credentials (DPCs) within Agentic(ie Gemini, GPay). The quick summary is that DPCs are an amazing technical innovation without a commercial framework or active governance, and thus will be challenged to operate separately from established networks (just like Stablecoins). This 23 page monster blog is a breakdown of the politics and the tech.

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Keeping Up With Chaos: A Payments Stakeholder Reality Check

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Short Blog – Bullets

It’s getting harder to keep up with payments, a subsector that has not been great for payment investors, between the Saaspocalypse, AI, agentic commerce, stablecoins, the Genius Act, open bank charters, and COF buying Brex, we are deep into “what just happened?” era. While I see tremendous opportunities, not everyone is impacted the same (see 2025: The Great Decoupling).

You don’t read this blog for deep tech insight; you read it to understand where change is actually happening and where the money, risk, and power are moving. Today is a short recap of which stakeholders face the biggest near-term impact, where progress is being made and where investment is flowing.

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AP2 as Merchant Signals – 4 Scenarios 

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Today I’m outlining three near-term scenarios (24 months) for how AP2 signals will work in agentic commerce. Per my blog last week, AP2 is the agentic payment scheme with the most momentum (160+ partners), but in the immediate term (2026–2027), it will operate primarily in a “signals” metaphor for 3 main reasons:

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Europe’s Siege – Digital Sovereignty Strategy

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Summary

EU’s  payment and identity landscape is currently the theater of a high-stakes conflict between regulatory ambition and commercial reality. For the past decade, European legislators have pursued a strategy of “regulatory innovation,” attempting to break the dominance of US-based technology platforms (Apple, Google) and payment networks (Visa, Mastercard) through legislative mandates. From the failed efforts of 2015 IFR (regulating excess profits), PSD2, PSD3 and eIDAS 2.0, the pattern is consistent: enforce technical openness in the hope that competitive markets will spontaneously emerge.

This strategy is fundamentally flawed because it conflates technical connectivity with commercial viability. While the EU has successfully legislated open APIs and is now forcing open the phone SE architecture, it has consistently failed to address the “commercial constructs” (governance, liability, and economic incentives) that make these systems work. Without a radical shift acknowledging the necessity of commercial constructs over regulation, the EU’s initiatives will result in compliant but commercially irrelevant infrastructure, that no one will monetize (or invest in), further relegating the EU to a second tier market and leaving US platforms to dominate.

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Machine to Machine Transactions: How to Resolve Trust and Governance Gaps. 

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FIDO, VC, AP2, Tokenization, Credential Issuance, Biometrics, …etc

Executive Summary

The transition to agentic, machine-to-machine (M2M) commerce creates a profound governance gap that existing technology-first standards cannot fill. Today, human-in-the-loop (HIL) transactions, whether at a point-of-sale or in eCommerce, are secured not by technology alone, but by the robust, contract-based governance and risk-allocation models of networks like Visa and Mastercard. As stated previously, V/MA are the identity infrastructure for the internet and identity is the core “shaping force” for all new payment schemes.

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Fastlane and FIDO Enabled Checkout

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© Starpoint LLP, 2024. No part of this site, blog.starpointllp.com, may be reproduced or retransmitted, in whole or in part, in any manner without the permission of the copyright owner.

PayPal’s bulls are building a case that Fastlane will drive new growth. My perspective after talking with many of the large US eCom merchants, 

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Future Scenario – Impact of “Perfect” Authentication

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A follow-up to my previous post covering Identity, Authentication and Risk

FIDO2, eID, Mobile Wallets, and other initiatives are rapidly advancing to a future of passwordless authentication. “Perfect Authentication” will be highly disruptive to all payment networks, methods and stakeholders. This blog outlines the rough economic impact, winners and losers in a future scenario. Today’s blog is not a dissertation but a “framework” providing puts and takes on disruption due to better authentication. 

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Payments and Identity – UPI continues to lead the world

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Short 4 page blog

I’ve written heavily on payments, trust networks and identity. Today I’m providing an example of how UPI, powered by UIDAI’s centralized identity,  is creating a new cannon for next-generation payment networks and trust.

I believe that mobile platforms are well placed to learn their lessons in India and create a new phone based network agnostic identity platform that will drive a significant change to payments, the internet and how we manage trust with counterparties.

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FedNow Hurdles and Opportunities

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Short Blog – Follow Up to Last Week’s FedNow Update 

I’ve got 4 blogs in queue with Part 5 – Future of Retail Banking coming next week. I’ve been asked to expand beyond my pro-network bent into areas like FedNow, PayPal, Stripe and Asia… etc and I will oblige. For today, drilling down on FedNow’s opportunity and the key barriers for “break out growth” (expanding on the last 2 bullets within 22 Feb FedNow blog).  Feedback appreciated.

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