As AI agents begin handling more online transactions, many e-commerce systems still assume a human is behind every interaction. That disconnect is creating new challenges for fraud prevention, authentication, and personalization as businesses struggle to determine who — or what — is actually initiating a transaction.
That challenge is pushing some identity-verification providers to rethink traditional Know Your Customer (KYC) models for a world in which software, not just people, may initiate and authorize transactions. In that environment, the key question is no longer just who the customer is, but what actor is taking action, under whose authority, and for what purpose.
According to Albert Roux, EVP of product at Microblink, autonomous commerce is beginning to blur the distinction between human customers and the systems acting on their behalf. In some cases, the actor may be a software agent operating with varying levels of autonomy on a user’s behalf — or interacting directly with other systems.
Traditional KYC frameworks are largely static. They answer “Who are you?” at a single point in time, but not who — or what — is acting at a given moment, under what authority, or with what permissions.
