Know Your Agent (KYA): The Definition

What Is Know Your Agent?

Know Your Agent (KYA) is the process of verifying an AI agent's identity, authority, and integrity before it transacts. KYC answers one question about a person: are you who you claim to be? KYA must answer three questions about an agent: who stands behind you, what are you allowed to do, and are you still the agent your owner deployed. An agent that passes the first two checks and fails the third is the most dangerous counterparty in commerce, because it spends real money with stolen intent.

Why KYC Does Not Cover Agents

KYC was built for humans who act for themselves. An agent acts for someone else, under delegated authority, at machine speed, across many merchants at once. That breaks three assumptions the fraud stack rests on. First, the person at checkout is the person who pays. With agents, no person is at checkout. Second, identity proves intent. With agents, a hijacked agent keeps its identity and loses its intent. Third, fraud shows up as anomalies in human behavior. Agents have no human behavior. The controls that watch mouse movement, typing cadence, and device history go blind when the buyer is code.

KYA vs KYC vs KYB

KYC verifies a person. KYB verifies a company. KYA verifies a delegation: an agent acting on someone else's authority. The first two run once, at onboarding, because people and companies change slowly. KYA must run continuously, because an agent's integrity can change between one transaction and the next.

• Subject. KYC checks a natural person. KYB checks a business entity. KYA checks an AI agent and the mandate it carries.
• Proof of identity. KYC uses government ID and a liveness check. KYB uses registration records and beneficial owners. KYA uses a passport bound to a principal.
• Proof of authority. A person acts for themselves. A company shows officer records. An agent needs a mandate: scope, limits, expiry.
• Cadence. KYC and KYB run at onboarding and refresh rarely. KYA runs at every consequential transaction.
• Failure mode. KYC fails on stolen or synthetic identity. KYB fails on shell companies. KYA fails on a hijacked agent whose identity stays valid while its intent is replaced.
• Revocation. Human and business credentials revoke slowly, through case work. Agent authority must die in one call, from outside the agent, before the next transaction clears.

The last two rows carry the argument. A stolen human identity is an identity problem. A hijacked agent is not: its identity stays perfect while its intent is replaced. When that happens, revocation cannot wait for a case worker.

What Is an Agent Passport?

An Agent Passport is a signed, verifiable credential that binds an AI agent to the principal who deployed it and the authority that principal granted. It is issued to the agent, not by the agent. That distinction matters: a compromised agent cannot edit or revoke its own passport, and its owner can freeze it from outside. The passport travels with the agent and any counterparty can check it before accepting a transaction.

The 6 Layers of a Full KYA Check

• Principal Identity. Which person or company stands behind this agent?
• Agent Identity. Is this the same agent that was issued the passport?
• Wallet Provenance. Where did this agent's funds come from?
• Authorization Scope. What is this agent allowed to do, for how much, until when?
• Environment Identity. Is the agent running where it should run?
• Cross-Merchant Reputation. How has this agent behaved across other counterparties?

A vendor that checks 1 or 2 of these layers is doing agent identification. KYA requires all 6, because attackers route around whichever layer you skip.

The 4-State Verdict

A KYA check must end in a decision, not a score alone. FLINT returns 1 of 4 verdicts: ALLOW, STEP-UP, REVIEW, or BLOCK. ALLOW clears the transaction. STEP-UP asks the agent or its principal for more proof. REVIEW routes the transaction to a human queue. BLOCK stops it and quarantines the passport. A quarantined passport stays dead. The attacker's only move is to start over with a new identity and zero standing.

The Signed Verification Record

A verification record is the signed receipt of a KYA check. It states which agent, which authority, which verdict, and when, and it is cryptographically signed so either party can prove what was checked if the transaction is later disputed. FLINT signs records with both a classical and a post-quantum algorithm. For sellers, the record is the evidence layer that card networks never built for machine buyers.

Identity Is Not Integrity

This is the line that separates KYA from agent identification. Identity proves who the agent is. Integrity proves the agent still serves its owner. In May 2026, an attacker drained roughly $200,000 from an AI agent's wallet without stealing a key or breaking a rule. The agent's identity was intact the entire time. Its integrity was not: hostile instructions had replaced its owner's intent. Any KYA framework that stops at identity certifies the compromised agent along with the honest one.

How KYA Differs From Other Frameworks

Several companies now publish agent passport or KYA material. The differences matter.

• Trulioo's Digital Agent Passport describes 5 checkpoints: provenance, user binding, permission scope, behavior telemetry, and risk scoring. It is a framework announced alongside Google's AP2 protocol. It does not publish a verdict model or a signed, disputable record.
• Workday's Agent Passport manages workforce agents inside one company's HR and IT systems. It answers an internal governance question, not a commerce question. It does not verify an agent to an outside counterparty.
• ERC-8004 registers agent identities on Ethereum. It is a registry, not a decision. A registry tells you an agent exists. It does not tell you whether to accept this transaction now.
• AP2 mandates prove what a user authorized. They do not check whether the agent presenting the mandate is still the agent that received it.

FLINT runs all 6 layers on a live transaction, returns a verdict, and signs the record. The check is a product you can call today, not a framework paper.

Who Needs KYA

Merchants who receive agent traffic, which by 2026 is most merchants. API sellers on machine-payment rails such as x402, where 165 million transactions have already cleared with no dispute layer. Agent builders who want their agents accepted rather than blocked. Insurers and underwriters who need evidence, not assertions, before they price agent risk.

Common Questions