Know-Your-Agent (KYA): Extending Financial Identity Beyond Humans

Abstract

Financial identity systems were built for humans. Know-Your-Customer (KYC), Anti-Money Laundering (AML), and beneficial ownership frameworks assume that economic actors are natural persons or legally incorporated entities. That assumption no longer holds. Autonomous artificial intelligence agents now negotiate contracts, execute procurement, trade digital assets, allocate treasury capital, and conduct cross-border transactions without real-time human intervention. Yet these agents possess no formal financial identity. This article introduces Know-Your-Agent (KYA)—a governance framework that extends financial identity infrastructure beyond humans to autonomous systems. Article argue that AI agents operating in financial contexts must be identifiable, accountable, auditable, and risk-classified. We develop a layered identity architecture, outline an agent risk scoring model, explore behavioral drift monitoring, analyze legal liability structures, and examine regulatory implications across jurisdictions. Through detailed use cases in retail procurement, decentralized finance (DeFi), enterprise treasury management, and IoT payment ecosystems, we demonstrate why KYA is not optional but foundational for the next generation of digital trust infrastructure. The article concludes with a strong future research agenda spanning explainability standards, cross-jurisdictional identity portability, agent-to-agent contract governance, systemic risk modeling, and the emergence of AI insurance markets.