Akamai, Visa partner to secure identity and trust in emerging agentic commerce

Collaboration combines Visa’s Trusted Agent Protocol with Akamai’s edge-based intelligence to help merchants authenticate AI agents, link them to real users, and manage fraud risks as autonomous shopping activity accelerates.

Akamai Technologies has entered into a strategic collaboration with Visa to strengthen identity verification, user recognition, and security controls for agentic commerce—an emerging model in which autonomous AI agents browse, compare, and make purchases on behalf of consumers.

Under the partnership, Akamai will integrate Visa’s Trusted Agent Protocol with its own edge-based behavioral intelligence, user recognition capabilities, and bot and abuse protection services. The joint approach is designed to help merchants safely distinguish legitimate AI-driven activity from malicious automation, while preserving security, personalization, and customer trust across digital storefronts.

Addressing trust gaps in AI-driven shopping

As AI agents become more active in online commerce, merchants are grappling with a new class of automated traffic that differs from traditional bots. Beyond blocking abuse, retailers must now authenticate the AI agent itself, understand the intent behind its actions, and verify the identity of the consumer the agent represents.

According to Akamai’s 2025 Digital Fraud and Abuse Report, AI-powered bot traffic has increased by 300% over the past year. In the commerce sector alone, more than 25 billion AI bot requests were recorded during a two-month period, underscoring the expanding attack surface and the growing need for verifiable identity controls.

By combining Trusted Agent Protocol’s authentication framework with Akamai’s real-time behavioral and network intelligence, merchants can gain visibility into AI agent activity before it reaches sensitive systems. The integration is expected to help businesses differentiate trusted agents from malicious bots at scale, enabling AI-driven commerce without weakening security posture.

Dual identity verification at the edge

Patrick Sullivan, Chief Technology Officer for Security Strategy at Akamai, said the success of agentic commerce depends on reliable recognition. “The promise of agentic commerce hinges on recognition—the ability to trust an agent acting on someone’s behalf,” he noted, adding that the collaboration addresses the challenge of verifying both the agent and the consumer it represents.

Visa Chief Product and Strategy Officer Jack Forestell said trusted participation is essential for AI-driven transactions to scale. By deploying Trusted Agent Protocol with Akamai, he said, merchants gain real-time intelligence that supports innovation without introducing additional risk.

Designed for global scale

Trusted Agent Protocol enables AI agents using Visa credentials to securely communicate their authorization, shopping intent, and payment information using standard web infrastructure. Designed to require minimal changes to merchant systems or user experience, the protocol can scale across Visa’s global acceptance network of roughly 175 million merchant locations.

Akamai said the integration will be supported across its cloud platform, allowing merchants to operate at the speed and scale required for agentic commerce. Today, nine of the world’s top ten retailers already rely on Akamai to support high-traffic, secure digital commerce environments—a footprint the company believes positions it well to support the next phase of AI-driven online shopping.