For decades, the financial and technology sectors have been obsessed with KYC (Know Your Customer). The goal was simple: to confirm that the human on the other side of the screen is who they say they are. But it's 2026, and the landscape has changed radically.

Today, the person trying to open an account, book a luxury hotel, or execute a purchase order is likely not a human, but their Autonomous AI Agent.

Welcome to the era of KYA: Know Your Agent.

What is KYA and why do we need it now?

KYA is the verification protocol designed to validate the identity, permissions, and operating limits of an artificial intelligence agent.

If your personal AI agent has access to your credit card to manage your travel, how does the service provider know that the agent really has your permission? How do we prevent a malicious agent from impersonating a legitimate assistant to empty a digital wallet?

Fraud is no longer about deceiving humans; it's about deceiving other agents.

The Three Pillars of KYA

For Joinble and other identity platforms to validate an agent in 2026, we rely on three fundamental axes:

1. Cryptographic Attribution: Each agent must be linked to a public/private key that unequivocally connects it with its owner (human or company). It is the "ID of the machine."
2. Proof of Intent: It is not enough to know who the agent is, but what it is allowed to do. KYA verifies that the action (e.g., a transfer of €5,000) falls within the mandate granted by the user.
3. Model Reputation: In a world with thousands of language models, provenance matters. Is it an agent based on a secure and audited model, or is it a "jailbroken" AI designed to bypass security controls?

From Onboarding People to Onboarding Algorithms

At Joinble, we are redesigning our KYC workflows to include KYA layers. This means our APIs no longer just expect a selfie and an ID document; they are now prepared to receive cryptographic "handshakes" from autonomous agents.

For sectors like Luxury Real Estate or Fintech, KYA enables:

• 24/7 transactions without human intervention: Agents can close notary or financial agreements if their KYA identity is validated.
• Total elimination of friction: Onboarding occurs in milliseconds between machines, without forms.

Conclusion: The Future is Machine-to-Machine

KYC is not going to disappear, but it will become the foundation upon which KYA is built. First we verify the human, and then that human delegates their identity to their trusted agents.

The question for companies today is no longer "How do I verify my customers?", but "Is my platform ready to do business with my customers' agents?".

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