Who authorised the agent to transact — and what evidence remains?
Agents can already buy things. The unresolved question is not whether they can transact — it is how a person or a firm grants one bounded authority, how that authority is checked before money moves, and what evidence exists afterwards. Four groups are answering that question at once: payment networks, standards bodies, AI platforms and regulators. They use the same words to mean different things.
The emerging stack has identity protocols, payment credentials, commerce protocols and payment rails, and they are being built quickly and well. What it does not yet have is a general-purpose authority layer: something that decides whether this particular action, at this moment, is within the authority a person actually granted. That is the layer mnd8t is building, and the reason this reference exists.
Everything here is a record of what exists, sourced to primary documents wherever one exists, with our own reading clearly marked as such. It is updated as the field moves.
Start here
The Agentic Authority Stack
The Agentic Authority Stack is a six-layer model for how an AI agent moves from delegated permission to completed financial action: authority, identity, credential, rail, commerce and governance.
Everything on this site is organised against these six layers. Read the stack from the bottom: each layer assumes the one beneath it has been answered, and most confusion in this field comes from an argument about one layer being conducted in the vocabulary of another. It is a lens, not a standard — use it, argue with it, or cite it against us.
The card networks have built parts of credential and rail. ACP and UCP have taken commerce. Trusted Agent Protocol and Web Bot Auth have taken identity. FIDO now holds the standards work spanning identity, credential and authority. Regulators are defining governance. The base of the stack — whether a specific proposed action is within the authority a principal granted — is where the work is chartered but not yet delivered. FIDO now holds the standards effort spanning identity, credential and authority, and no broadly adopted architecture yet provides the full lifecycle of dynamic, stateful delegated authority. Every layer above assumes that lifecycle exists.
The Agentic Authority Stack is version 1.0, published 8 September 2026. Quote it, adapt it, or place a technology in it — attribution to mnd8t.com/intelligence#agentic-authority-stack is all we ask. The version number moves when a layer is added, removed, or its question changes, so a citation stays checkable.
Where the decision sits
An authority decision happens between the agent forming an intention and anything moving money. The execution boundary is the part worth noticing: mnd8t decides and proves, and never holds funds, keys or payment credentials.
Latest in the tracker
- 29 October 2026PhotonPay raises a $40M Series C and is developing a policy-based execution framework for agents on its payment platform
- 29 October 2026Mintive, formerly MintMCP, raises a $7M seed for identity, tool permissions and approvals for enterprise agents
- 26 October 2026Link adds a funded balance for AI agents, starting with Instinct, so purchases under a per-purchase limit need no approval
- 21 October 2026Stripe launches Treasury for agents, letting startups' agents pay invoices and move money under permissions the business sets
Analyses
How this is written
- Primary sources. Every factual claim links to the specification, press release, standards body or draft that states it. Secondary coverage is used only where no primary source exists, and is labelled.
- Opinion is marked. Where we are reading rather than reporting, it appears under an mnd8t assessment heading and nowhere else.
- No competitor scoring. mnd8t is a policy engine, and most of what is described here is not a substitute for one. Where something genuinely overlaps with what we build, the analysis says so plainly rather than grading it.
- Corrections welcome. If something here is wrong or out of date, write to hello@mnd8t.com and it will be fixed and dated.
The authority layer
Identity tells you who the agent is. Credentials tell you what it can present. Commerce protocols let it transact, and payment rails move the money. These systems carry or enforce parts of delegated authority. mnd8t's focus is a separate, versioned authority layer with stateful policy decisions and linked evidence — because whether this specific action is within the authority the principal intended to grant depends on state a credential minted at issuance cannot see: the budget already consumed, this counterparty's history, whether a person would have wanted to be asked.
mnd8t exists for that decision. A submitted payment or transfer is evaluated against a live, versioned mandate and answered approve, reject or escalate before any money moves — deterministically, with a rule-by-rule trace and no model in the decision path. You or your regulated provider execute; mnd8t proves what was authorised.