Hong Kong Tests AI Agent Payment Verification with New 'Agentic ID' Framework

Hong Kong's four major financial regulators announced on August 27 that the first batch of projects has been approved for the expanded "GenA.I. Sandbox++" pilot program, which aims to move agentic artificial intelligence from policy discussions into real-world financial workflows. The tests will cover customer onboarding, payments, insurance claims, and customer interactions. Regulators selected 36 use cases from nearly 100 proposals, involving 30 financial institutions and 27 technology partners, with technical trials expected to begin later this year.

In the payments space, one of the most closely watched projects comes from HKT Payment, the financial services arm of Hong Kong Telecom. The company said it will partner with Red Dot Technology to test an "Agentic ID" framework for registering and verifying AI agents that initiate payments, top up wallets, conduct peer-to-peer transfers, and execute transactions between financial institutions. The framework will leverage decentralized identifiers and verifiable credentials to bind each agent to a verified individual or business, aiming to reduce identity spoofing and unauthorized operations while establishing a clearer record of agent actions and their authorization sources.

The program will also continue "AI-to-AI" experiments, where one AI system dynamically monitors the decisions and actions of another. Hong Kong's move is seen as a pioneering attempt by global regulators to explore compliance management for AI agents, particularly in payments, where ensuring the security and traceability of machine-to-machine transactions is becoming a focal point.

Source: https://www.pymnts.com/news/banking/2026/hong-kong-tests-know-your-agent-controls-in-payment-workflows/