Glossary

KYA (Know Your Agent)

The first pipeline agent. Verifies agent identity, checks trust score, validates exposure ceiling, and determines if the agent is authorized to transact.

Governance Pipeline

The 6-agent chain that every payment flows through: KYA → Orchestrator → Governance → Control → Execution → Audit. Each agent can CONTINUE, REJECT, ESCALATE, or HALT.

Trust Score

A 0-100 score assigned to each registered agent. Increases with successful transactions. Decreases with violations. Below 40 triggers escalation; below 20 triggers rejection.

Exposure Ceiling

Maximum total value an agent can transact. Includes daily_spent, monthly_spent, and lifetime_volume. Configured per agent in the KYA registry.

Policy Vertical

A category of business that determines which governance rules apply. Verticals: ai_commerce, treasury, marketplace, enterprise, consumer.

Rail Selection

The Control agent scores all available payment rails (SEPA, SWIFT, ACH, etc.) on cost, speed, compliance, and vertical fit, then selects the optimal path.

Agent Memory

Persistent learned state per pipeline agent. KYA remembers agent baselines. Control remembers rail performance. Memory persists to DB across transactions.

Consensus Signal

A collaborative decision between agents via the Message Bus. When KYA and Control agree, Governance can fast-track or escalate. Recorded in the audit trail.

HITL (Human-In-The-Loop)

When a payment is escalated, it requires human review. An operator approves or rejects via the dashboard or API. The pipeline resumes after the decision.

Kill Switch

Emergency mechanism that halts all payment processing across all agents immediately. Persisted to database. Activated via API or dashboard.

Immutable Audit Trail

Every agent decision is recorded in audit_entries with a PostgreSQL trigger preventing UPDATE/DELETE. 7-year retention. Hash-chain tamper detection.

Anomaly Detection

The Intelligence Engine detects: volume spikes, amount deviations, geographic shifts, timing anomalies. Builds behavioral baselines per agent.

Circuit Breaker

If a rail fails 5 times in 60 seconds, the circuit opens and Control routes to the next best rail. Prevents cascading failures.

Idempotency Key

A unique identifier (X-Idempotency-Key header) that prevents duplicate payments on retry. Cached for 30 minutes.

Regulatory Framework

A compliance regime that applies based on jurisdiction: FATF (cross-border), PSD2 (EU), MiCA (EU crypto), BSA (US), GDPR (EU data), FCA (UK).