2025-06-12 · agentmail

Know Your Agent (KYA), Explained

Know Your Agent (KYA) is the agent-era equivalent of KYC: verify the identity and trustworthiness of an AI counterparty before you transact with it.

KYC asks "who is this customer?" Know Your Agent asks the new question the agent economy creates: "should I trust this other agent?" When your agent pays another agent — or takes an instruction from one — you need a way to score that counterparty's trustworthiness before value moves.

What KYA evaluates

agentmail's KYA score weighs evidence like the counterparty's wallet age, a linked domain, a public key, an owner contact, and a declared country. Older wallets and verifiable domain ownership raise the score; fresh wallets and jurisdictions overlapping sanctions lists lower it.

How it fits the payment flow

KYA is not a replacement for sanctions screening — it is the layer above it. First, sanctions_check answers the binary "is this party prohibited?" question. Then KYA answers the softer "how much should I trust this party even if they are not sanctioned?" question. Together they let an agent decide allow, review, or decline with evidence behind it.

curl -X POST https://sanctionsai.dev/kya \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"agent_id":"bot-42","evidence":{"wallet_address":"0x...","wallet_age_days":310,"domain":"example.com"}}'

Start with the free tier: 5 sanctions checks/day, no key. Add KYA and risk scoring on a $19/mo plan.