Credentials & Authorization Registry for Agentic Commerce
The Enterprise Agent
Governance Standard
for Agentic Payments.
Enterprise AI agents are initiating payments today. No shared infrastructure exists to verify whether the organizations deploying them actually authorized them to commit financial obligations. CLARC closes that gap by providing the independently verifiable pre-transaction record that banks, auditors, and counterparties require before a payment executes.
Patent Pending · Published April 2026
The Problem
Agents are initiating payments today
Procurement ERP and agentic banks are all deploying AI agents that initiate enterprise payments today — across ACH, wire, stablecoin, and card rails. The volume is growing with every new deployment.
The governance chain is invisible
Board policy, CFO delegation, treasury mandate — the organizational authority structure that sanctions an agent to commit financial obligations does not travel with the payment instruction. It is internal, self-reported, and opaque to external parties.
No external party can verify the authorization
The bank processing the payment, the auditor reviewing the books, and the regulator conducting the examination cannot independently query whether the enterprise's governance chain sanctioned the agent. That record does not yet exist — except in CLARC.
“A payment made by AI agents can be valid at every system boundary while remaining unverifiable at the level of organizational authority. This is not a failure of individual systems. It is a missing layer across all of them.”
Validated by IMF NOTE/2026/004 — April 2026 formally identifies authorization traceability failures as a primary risk requiring policy intervention across global payment systems.
The Evidence Base
This is not a theoretical argument. It is an empirical one.
Documented infrastructure gaps
Consistent finding across all experiments
Forty-five specific infrastructure gaps were documented. Every experiment produced the same finding: enterprise payment agents can initiate financial transactions that are valid at every technical checkpoint while remaining unverifiable at the level of organizational governance. The research was conducted independently, published openly, and is available in full.
Download the Whitepaper (PDF)What CLARC Is
A neutral pre-transaction registry.
CLARC sits between enterprise systems and payment rails. Before a payment executes, CLARC verifies that the AI agent initiating it was organizationally authorized to do so — checking the delegation chain through which its authority flows, the scope of that authority, and whether it remains valid at the moment of execution.
The result is an independently queryable verification record that any bank, clearing network, auditor, or counterparty can rely on — without trusting the enterprise's own internal records.
CLARC is rail-agnostic by design. It works above ACH, wire, card, stablecoin, and tokenized rails simultaneously.
Register
Enterprise submits agent identity, delegation chain, scope, spend limits, and authorized rails. CLARC validates and issues a verified agent credential.
Verify
Before a payment executes, the agent queries CLARC to obtain a transaction certificate. CLARC returns a signed verification credential for the processing institution and creates an immutable audit record.
Revoke
Instant revocation across all connected parties simultaneously — regardless of which rail or platform the agent is operating on.
The board resolution analogy: banks already register authorized human signatories. CLARC applies identical logic to AI agents.
The Flow
Pre-Transaction Verification in Four Steps
Agent Initiates
Enterprise AI agent prepares a payment instruction and queries CLARC with its Agent ID and transaction scope before execution.
CLARC Verifies
CLARC checks the agent's delegation chain, scope of authority, spend limits, and authorized rails against the enterprise's registered governance record.
Credential Issued
CLARC returns a signed verification credential — verified or rejected — and creates an immutable pre-transaction audit record timestamped before execution.
Payment Proceeds
The signed CLARC credential travels with the payment instruction. The bank, clearing network, or counterparty can independently verify organizational authorization at any time.
If CLARC returns a rejected credential, the payment is blocked. The enterprise is notified. The failed attempt is recorded in the audit trail.
Why Now
The execution layers are being built, while the governance layer is still open
April 2026
IMF
NOTE/2026/004
Formally identifies authorization traceability failures as a primary risk requiring policy intervention across payment systems globally.
April 28, 2026
FIDO Alliance
Agentic Payments Working Group
Announced initiatives to develop interoperable standards for agentic interactions and commerce, co-chaired by Visa and Mastercard.
April 14, 2026
American Express
ACE Launch
AMEX debuts Agentic Commerce Experiences (ACE)™ developer kit and announces industry-first protection for registered agent purchases for consumers.
Get Involved
Financial Institutions
Financial institutions interested in direct CLARC membership, pilot participation, or design partner conversations are welcome to reach out.
Technology Partners
Technology companies building agentic payment solutions and interested in embedding CLARC governance are invited to explore a partnership.
Researchers and Standards Bodies
Academic researchers, policy institutions, and standards bodies interested in CLARC's evidence base or governance architecture are welcome to engage.