Your agent can't tell a real merchant from a fake one.
KYM gives a merchant a verified identity bound to its own domain and puts the check inside the payment path, so an AI shopping agent cannot pay an impostor even if it has never heard of us.
Everyone else verifies the agent · KYM verifies the merchant
Three people meet at a checkout. KYM gives each of them one job.
The one who moves the money enforces. The one who shops checks. The one who sells gets verified. Nobody has to trust the other two.
Payment facilitators and agentic checkout rails
You move the money. Put the KYM check in the settlement path and a careless or prompt-injected agent cannot pay an impostor through you, because it cannot move money without passing it.
Agent builders, AI browsers, shopping agents
Your agent lands on hosts it has never seen. Ask KYM about the host it is actually on and get one of three answers in under 10 ms. No key, no account, no fee.
Online sellers
A buyer that has never heard of you can pay you without a person stopping to ask who you are, and nobody can pay a clone of you and think it was you.
Three findings from the last year tell one story.
Being listed proves nothing. The agent decides alone. And when a model is handed a trusted reference, it stops being fooled.
Registries accepted malicious code
Eleven MCP registries and marketplaces were sent a deliberately malicious package. Nine accepted it. Part of a campaign of 7,600 fake GitHub repositories and 14 million downloads.
Being listed somewhere proves nothing. A directory is not a check.
Confirmations before it paid
An AI browser was told to buy an Apple Watch, landed on a counterfeit Walmart, found a listing, checked out and auto-filled the saved card and address. It never asked.
Human intuition is out of the loop. The agent is the single point of decision.
Models fooled, once given the real domain
Twenty-six models were shown a typosquat claiming to be the official site. Without a reference, two frontier models rated it legitimate. With the official domain as context, none did.
Agents don't need to get smarter. They need a trusted reference for what is real.
Given a reference, every model got it right.
KYM is the reference.
Machine-readable, free to consult, and bound to the merchant's domain so it cannot be copied along with the rest of the site.
Agents don't get suspicious. They get tasks done.
An agent told to “find the cheapest USD/SGD reference rate” cannot tell a real service from a copy of it. A cloned endpoint copies the template, the docs, the address and the company number, then undercuts on price, which is precisely what makes it win an automated comparison.
The harm is not abstract. The copy returns a rate that is wrong by three percent, and the agent computes a payment from it. On a US$10,000 transfer that is US$300, from a number nobody would blink at.
The obvious fix, having the agent look for a trust badge, fails immediately: a copy clones the badge too. It can clone the whole thing and display its victim's legal name while doing it.
An agent verifies the host it is actually on, never an identifier the page handed it.
A KYM identity is bound to a domain at the moment it is issued. Move it to another host and it stops verifying. Stolen credentials stop being useful the moment they travel.
Three moving parts, one of which nobody can skip.
Payment providers already run merchant checks. They keep the results private, tie them to payment accounts rather than websites, and silo them per provider, so no agent can consult them. KYM makes the proof public, machine-readable and bound to a domain.
The merchant proves who it is, once
KYM establishes that the business is real and registered, and that the merchant genuinely controls the domain it trades on. What comes back is an identity tied to that domain and to nothing else.
Anyone can check it, for nothing
Checking is open to every agent, facilitator and marketplace, at no cost and no sign-up. It is built to be cheap enough to run on every single transaction, because a check people skip protects nobody.
The payment path refuses to pay strangers
The check sits in the settlement path, not in the agent's reasoning. A careless or prompt-injected agent cannot skip it, because it cannot move money without passing it.
KYM is deliberately rail-agnostic. It asks you to adopt no chain, no protocol and no payment provider, and it holds no opinion about how your buyers pay. A trust layer that works on only one rail is a feature of that rail, not a trust layer.
See it happen, from the buyer's side.
A short walkthrough of an AI agent shopping around, comparing prices and paying. For a merchant, the interesting part is what you never have to do: once your identity is verified, a buyer who has never heard of you can transact without a person stopping to ask who you are.
KYM · Agent Purchase FlowWatch on YouTube
Unknown must never mean blocked.
A binary gate on a young registry blocks the honest majority and gets switched off within a week. KYM holds the money instead, and asks a human.
Settles instantly
Identity confirmed, still live, and bound to the host actually connected to. Money moves machine to machine, in seconds, with no human in the path.
Held for approval
No identity published. Funds are held rather than refused, and a person is asked to approve. The default is caution, not obstruction.
Refused, with a reason
Presented on the wrong domain, out of date, altered, or withdrawn since it was issued. The refusal says why, in a form software can act on.
The questions every conversation reaches.
Short answers. Click one to expand it.
Why not just have the agent look for a trust badge?
A clone copies the badge, the company number and the legal name. What it cannot copy is the hostname your request went to. KYM is keyed on that hostname and on nothing a page can hand you.
Why not let the model judge whether the site is real?
Without a reference, frontier models have rated a typosquat as legitimate. With the real domain as context, none did. KYM is that reference, delivered as an answer rather than a judgement call.
Does KYM see the transaction amount?
No. A check that sees the price can be tuned by it, and a low-value fast path is exactly the hole an attacker prices their goods to fit through. Identical domains get identical verdicts at every amount.
Which payment rail does this require?
None. KYM holds no opinion about how buyers pay. It works wherever the facilitator can ask one question before settling.
Is there an AI model in the check?
No. The check is deterministic. The answer is the same every time for the same domain and the same credential.
What happens if a merchant isn't registered yet?
The answer is UNKNOWN, not INVALID. The money is held and a person is asked, so an honest new merchant is never silently blocked.
What if a credential is stolen?
It is bound to the domain it was issued for. Presented from any other host it fails. A withdrawn credential stops verifying immediately, not at the next expiry.
What does it cost to check?
Nothing, with no key and no account, and it stays that way: a gate that costs money to consult is a gate people route around. Verification is free for merchants too, for a limited time.
Free for merchants, for a limited time. Checking is always free.
Registering costs nothing while we onboard our first merchants. Checking stays free for good: a gate that costs money to consult is a gate people route around, and a verification layer nobody consults protects nobody.
- Verification that the business is real and the domain is yours
- An identity bound to your domain, held by you
- Annual re-verification, and withdrawal the moment something changes
- A record of what was checked, and when
- Works with whatever rail your buyers arrive on
- Open to every agent, facilitator and marketplace
- Live status, so a withdrawn identity stops working immediately
- Drops into a checkout or settlement flow you already run
- No chain, protocol or provider to adopt
- Nothing to sign before you start checking
Get an identity, or get early access to the gate.
We're onboarding a first cohort of facilitators, agent builders and merchants. Tell us which you are and we'll come back to you with next steps. No obligation, no sales sequence.
You're on the list.
We'll be in touch at the address you gave us, usually within a working day. Nothing else is needed from you.