t54 Labs, the trust layer for the agentic economy, announced it has signed three separate memoranda of understanding (MOUs) with RiskX, Hecto Financial and Arco Financial. The agreements cover proposed work in AI agent payments, personalized structured investments and financial asset management workflows.

The collaborations build upon t54’s ongoing relationships with financial services and technology companies, helping them integrate AI agents into their operations through secure, scalable payment infrastructure. As part of the agreements with RiskX, Hecto Financial and Arco Financial, t54 will explore how its infrastructure can help verify the identity and authority of agents requesting financial transactions on behalf of users.

“Agent payments require more than a payment method; they also require a process for verifying that the authority granted to an agent aligns with the actual transaction,” said Chandler Fang, co-founder of t54.

Hecto Financial: Connecting Agent Payments with Existing Infrastructure

Hecto Financial, a South Korean provider of payment, banking and settlement services, and t54 will explore connecting Trustline, t54’s risk engine, with existing payment infrastructure to support agent identity verification and transaction risk assessment.

The initial focus is assessing the feasibility of Know Your Agent (KYA) verification on Hecto Financial’s AI Payment Platform, which is currently under development. Discussions are expected to expand to checking whether agent-requested payments align with user intent and authorized limits before execution. The companies will also explore potential applications connecting merchants with AI agents through automated payment systems.

RiskX: Exploring Personalized Structured Investments

RiskX is a South Korean fintech whose technology helps financial institutions design and value structured investment products, manage risk and automate trading workflows.

RiskX and t54 plan to develop a proof of concept for an AI-powered, personalized structured-investment solution. The proposed work will combine RiskX’s structured-product expertise with t54’s agent identity and risk infrastructure to examine how agents could understand customers’ investment objectives and risk parameters, identify appropriate product structures and operate within defined permissions.

Arco Financial: Exploring AI Agent Financial Services

Arco Financial is developing infrastructure for the distribution and allocation of financial assets. The companies will explore integrating Arco Vault with AI-enabled financial services and introducing suitable applications through its planned service ecosystem.

The companies will examine how Trustline could assess agent identity, delegated authority and transaction risks before payments or asset transfers are executed. Under the proposed structure, Arco Financial would be responsible for asset allocation decisions and the operation of Arco Vault. Initial use cases, technical validation, integration methods and testing schedules will be determined through subsequent discussions.

t54 also recently participated in a cross-institutional research paper alongside Google DeepMind, Microsoft Research, Columbia University, Stanford University and Virtuals Protocol. The paper proposes a new Agentic Risk Standard (ARS), a framework that applies financial risk management principles to AI agent transactions.

t54 previously announced its $5 million seed funding round, which was led by Anagram, PL Capital and Franklin Templeton, with strategic participation from several investment and technology firms. t54 is led by Chandler Fang, who previously served as Lead Product Manager of Payments at Ripple, where he led the company’s cross-border payments platform.