December 11, 2025
Today's Briefing: December 11th
NewsAgents Take
Today’s stories all reinforce one direction of travel.
Agentic commerce is moving out of the experimentation phase and into the governance phase. Trust, protocol design and legal accountability are becoming the main battlegrounds.
Three clear shifts:
Trust is becoming the core competitive asset.
Agents cannot operate safely without verifiable identity, clear permissions and transparent reasoning. This needs to be built into the underlying rails, not patched in at the application level.Protocol control is becoming the power center.
The interface between shopper agents and merchant agents will shape traffic distribution, ranking, payments and risk posture. Selecting a protocol will become a strategic choice similar to selecting your processor or orchestration layer.Governance is accelerating.
Open standards groups and legal frameworks are starting to formalise expectations for safety, explainability and accountability. Agentic systems will be treated as critical infrastructure.
For merchants and PSPs, the practical takeaway is simple.
When evaluating agentic partners or pilots, ask who controls the protocol, how trust is enforced, and how decisions can be audited. Governance is now as important as capability.
1. Trust is the ultimate currency in agentic commerce
What happened
Economy Middle East argues that the defining constraint in agentic commerce is trust. As agents take on discovery, evaluation and checkout activities, users and merchants must trust decisions that happen out of sight.
Why it matters
Trust must be encoded directly in the protocol layer.
Identity, consent and data permissions must be machine readable.
Merchants that cannot demonstrate trustworthiness may be excluded from an agent’s eligible set of suppliers.
Read:
https://economymiddleeast.com/news/why-trust-is-the-ultimate-currency-in-agentic-commerce/
2. The protocol power struggle reshaping agentic commerce
What happened
PYMNTS highlights how competing protocols are fighting to become the default routing layer for agentic transactions. AP2, ACP and other contenders want to control the handshake between shopper agents and merchant agents.
Why it matters
The protocol can influence which merchants are visible or preferred.
Fee structures and default settings may bias traffic.
Merchants risk being locked into specific ecosystems if a dominant protocol emerges.
3. Linux Foundation pushes for open governance of agentic AI
What happened
A new Linux Foundation backed organisation aims to create open standards for agentic systems. The focus is on safety guidelines, technical specifications and interoperability across use cases.
Why it matters
Open standards reduce dependence on proprietary ecosystems.
Merchants and PSPs gain a neutral venue to shape the rulebook.
Transparent governance could improve trust in cross platform agentic interactions.
4. Legal and regulatory questions for AI in payments
What happened
Lexology outlines how regulators are beginning to apply strict expectations around accountability, monitoring, explainability and consumer protection to AI in payment flows.
Why it matters
Agentic decisions will be scrutinised under the same standards as any high risk automated decision.
Internal AI and external agents will face similar governance requirements.
Payments and fraud teams will need cross functional controls that can be audited and defended.
Read:
https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=db423b17-1a33-46c4-84a2-5e2a2dd2bb6d
