A-Comm Technologies, Inc. Forms Founding Consortium to Establish Open-Source Evidence Protocol for Agentic Commerce

EmitenTrust.com - SAN FRANCISCO, Oct. 28, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- A-Comm Technologies, Inc. today announced the formation of the A-Comm Evidence Protocol Consortium, an independent, neutral governance body established to steward the long-term evolution of the A-Comm Evidence Protocol (AEP). AEP establishes an adjudication-ready, cryptographically verifiable evidence standard for agentic commerce by capturing the full transaction lifecycle from AI-driven discovery to payment authorization and fulfillment.

Joining A-Comm Technologies, Inc. as founding consortium members is an ecosystem coalition spanning payment tokenization, digital asset and traditional banking, compliance infrastructure, dispute resolution, biometrics, and point-of-sale platforms.

Companies in alphabetical order include Action State Group, Anchorage Digital, Axorum, Baselayer, Basis Theory, Chargeflow, Crossmint, GoTab, Kyance Inc., Nevermined, People's Court, Rimark, Skyfire, and Wink.

As consumers increasingly deploy autonomous AI agents to discover, negotiate, and execute purchases, legacy payment infrastructure faces an unprecedented attribution and dispute challenge. When an autonomous agent completes a purchase, the lack of verifiable provenance linking user intent, agent delegation, policy limits, and execution creates friction, chargebacks, and "friendly fraud" vulnerabilities.

The Consortium ensures that the cryptographic evidence layer reconciling autonomous transactions remains open, vendor-neutral, and governed collaboratively by the payments ecosystem.

"The next evolution of commerce isn't just about enabling agents to discover and transact. It's also about making those interactions and transactions observable, traceable, and auditable, helping protect merchants, improve consumer experiences, and build trust across the ecosystem," said Krystal Gracier, founder and CEO of A-Comm Technologies, which authored AEP and serves as the consortium's interim secretariat.

AEP is a witness, not a competitor. It wraps agent protocols a transaction already uses, including AP2, ACP, UCP, x402, Visa TAP, MCP, A2A, PAP and others, and records how each one verified. It does not rank, replace or adjudicate them. AEP records evidence across card, stablecoin, account and real-time payment rails.

The consortium's founding terms are built to keep the standard neutral. Membership carries no dues. Each company holds one vote, and A-Comm Technologies holds the same single vote as every other member, with no veto and no casting vote. Decisions are made by consensus; where consensus cannot be reached, a decision requires two-thirds of the votes cast.

"Every agent-initiated payment starts with a credential, and every dispute comes back to whether the agent was allowed to use it. At Basis Theory, we issue the credentials agents pay with on card networks and wallets. An open, shared evidence standard lets everyone in the chain prove what was authorized, without each of us building our own version." Lucas Chociay, Agentic Product & Engineering, Basis Theory

"Trust in agentic commerce starts with knowing who an agent represents and what it is authorized to do. Baselayer joined the AEP consortium because shared, verifiable evidence is essential to establish accountability, protect against fraud, and safely scale agent-initiated payments." Nicole Dunn, GM Agentic Economy, Baselayer

"Hospitality runs on trust between operators and their guests. As AI agents start ordering and paying on guests' behalf, that trust has to carry over, with a clear record of what was asked for and approved. We're excited to see what A-Comm is bringing to this important conversation."  Mateen Habib, Chief Growth Officer, GoTab

"The future of commerce may be autonomous. Accountability cannot be. When AI agents start making purchasing decisions on behalf of consumers, a successful payment is no longer enough to establish trust. We need verifiable evidence of what the consumer authorized, what the agent was authorized to do, and what actually happened. At Chargeflow, we see firsthand what happens when trust breaks down. That's why we're joining as a founding member of the AEP consortium: to help establish an open, verifiable foundation of evidence for the next generation of commerce. Because the future of payments isn't just about enabling machines to transact. It's about making every transaction accountable." Ariel Chen, Co-Founder & CEO, Chargeflow

AEP has been developed in public. The first public comment window on the current draft, AEP v1.0.3-rc.2, ran from July 13 to Aug. 14, 2026, and drew over 50 public comments. Each comment receives a public disposition (accept, accept with modification, defer or decline with a rationale), published in the log. The Nilson Report featured A-Comm Technologies and AEP in Issue 1314 in September 2026.

The second public comment round on AEP opens Monday, Nov. 2. Commenting does not require membership. Comments are made in public on GitHub at github.com/A-Comm-Tech/a-comm-evidence-protocol, through issues and discussions.

Membership in the consortium remains open. Organizations interested in joining can contact the secretariat at contact@a-comm.ai. Learn more at acommevidenceprotocol.org.

About the A-Comm Evidence Protocol (AEP)

The A-Comm Evidence Protocol (AEP) is an open standard for a tamper-evident record of agent-initiated transactions. AEP wraps the agent and payment protocols in use today, across card, stablecoin, account and real-time rails, and assigns no outcome or liability. Any party can verify an AEP record they participated in, and conformance is defined by published test vectors. AEP is open source under Apache 2.0. Web: acommevidenceprotocol.org

About the A-Comm Evidence Protocol Consortium

The A-Comm Evidence Protocol Consortium governs the development of AEP in the open, with no dues, one vote per member company and a royalty-free patent commitment modeled on the W3C Patent Policy. Membership remains open, implementing AEP never requires membership, and anyone can comment on the specification in public on GitHub.

About A-Comm Technologies, Inc.

A-Comm Technologies, Inc. authored the A-Comm Evidence Protocol and serves as interim secretariat for the A-Comm Evidence Protocol Consortium. Media: press@a-comm.ai. Web: a-comm.ai.

Media contact

Krystal Gracier
Founder and CEO, A-Comm Technologies, Inc.
press@a-comm.ai

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SOURCE A-Comm Technologies, Inc.