HSBC and the Emerging Payments Association Asia (EPAA) have established an AI & Agentic Payments Working Group to bring together banks, payment networks, fintechs, and tech platforms to establish agentic commerce standards across the Asia-Pacific region.
Announced on July 20, 2026, the group will focus on developing shared infrastructure and standards for AI agent identity, authentication, and authorization, along with clear trust and liability frameworks to govern responsible agent behavior. Additionally, HSBC and the EPAA aim to create commercial models that ensure agentic commerce remains scalable and viable for all industry participants.
The initiative will also coordinate regulatory engagement across ASEAN and APEC markets. The focus on APAC comes as Mordor Intelligence forecasts the region to be the fastest-growing market globally for agentic commerce, expanding at a compound annual growth rate of nearly 45% through 2031.
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