EPAA and HSBC launch APAC working group on agentic payments

Source: Electronic Payments International Author: Aninda Chakraborty

The Emerging Payments Association Asia (EPAA), a membership organisation for the Asia Pacific (APAC) payments sector, has launched an AI & Agentic Payments Working Group, with HSBC as a founding member.

In a statement, EPAA said the initiative will bring together banks, payment networks, fintechs, and technology platforms to develop standards and frameworks that support agentic commerce across APAC.

The launch comes as AI agents begin to initiate payments on behalf of consumers and businesses in the region.

Recent Developments in Agentic Payments

• In May, HSBC, together with Mastercard, tested end-to-end B2B agentic commerce transactions for two Singapore-based clients.
• Separately, Alipay's AI Pay exceeded 120 million autonomous transactions in a single week in February.

Key Challenges Identified

EPAA noted that there is currently no "agreed standard" across APAC on who is liable when an AI agent exceeds its mandate. The association also flagged unresolved issues around:

• Cross-border identification and authentication of agents
• The ability of fraud monitoring tools to distinguish legitimate agent activity from compromised accounts
• Dispute handling when transactions are initiated by software rather than a person

Working Group Objectives

The working group is intended as an industry-wide effort to address these issues collectively. According to EPAA, the group will:

• Develop shared standards and supporting infrastructure for agent identity, authentication, and authorisation
• Establish trust and liability frameworks for cases where an agent acts beyond its mandate or when a payment fails
• Examine business and commercial frameworks for scaling agentic commerce
• Coordinate engagement with regulators across ASEAN and APEC
• Produce toolkits, briefings, and operational intelligence for member organisations

Regulatory Timeline

EPAA said the group's positions will be developed through its 18-month engagement process with ASEAN and APEC governments and central banks. Formal policy paper recommendations are scheduled for the 51st ASEAN Summit and APEC Economic Leaders' Week in November 2027.

Industry Commentary

Camilla Bullock, CEO of the Emerging Payments Association Asia, said:

"The EPAA AI & Agentic Payments Working Group brings the right organisations together to define the standards, infrastructure and frameworks that agentic commerce demands, and takes those positions directly to the regulators and governments across ASEAN and APEC. The organisations that help build these frameworks now will shape how agentic commerce works across Asia Pacific for the next decade."

Membership and Structure

EPAA said places on the AI & Agentic Payments Working Group are open to member organisations across the APAC payments ecosystem. The committee level will include 10–12 organisations, while the wider working group will include up to 30 organisations.

This article was originally created and published by Electronic Payments International, a GlobalData owned brand.