Skyfire and Forter expand AI agent checkout fraud controls as agentic orders quadruple since August

Skyfire and Forter have expanded their partnership to help merchants approve legitimate AI-agent purchases without giving fraudsters a free pass through checkout. The integration matters because agentic commerce is starting to look like real payment volume, and the usual bot defenses are not built to tell a trusted shopping agent from a malicious script wearing a fake moustache.

1. Forter is now using Skyfire’s Know Your Agent (KYA) protocol data inside its Fraud Management for Agentic Commerce product. The point is to add identity signals for AI agents to Forter’s fraud decisioning, so merchants can assess agent-driven purchases with more context than a simple “bot or not” label.
2. The companies said the volume of agentic orders flowing through Forter’s network has more than quadrupled since August. For PSPs and acquirers watching checkout conversion and fraud exposure at the same time, that is the part that turns this from a demo into an operating problem.
3. The integration is designed to improve checkout authorisation rates without adding extra steps for legitimate agent-driven purchases. Forter said the new identity signals are folded into its existing risk data, so merchants do not need to change checkout interfaces to use the feature.
4. The underlying issue is straightforward: traditional bot management systems are built to identify and block automated traffic, but legitimate AI agents shopping for consumers can trigger the same signals. That creates a familiar merchant dilemma — reject genuine orders, or loosen controls and invite abuse from fraudsters pretending to be trusted agent traffic.
5. Skyfire’s KYA protocol is built for verified identity for web access and account creation, tokenised credit cards, real-time micropayments and programmatic checkout across APIs, websites and marketplaces. Forter, which counts Nordstrom, Instacart and Priceline among its customers and says almost one million businesses use its platform, is positioning the integration as a way to validate both the AI agent and the consumer behind it.

Skyfire is backed by Evolution, DCVC, a16z CSX, Coinbase Ventures, Neuberger Berman and Brevan Howard Digital. In practice, the commercial question for merchants and payment providers is simple: if agentic commerce keeps growing, checkout systems will need identity logic that can separate authorised automation from fraud without slowing down the payment flow.