Compliance infrastructure for autonomous payments

Know your agent.
Before the funds move.

AI agents are starting to pay for things on their own, per API call, per data lookup, per transaction, with no human approving each one. KYA is the gateway that checks a payment before it settles: spending mandate, sanctions screening, behavioral deviation. Every decision, stamped and logged.

LIVE CHECKPOINT · SAMPLE14:02:11
agentagent-7f2c
payeecloudvec.io
amount12.40 USDC
mandatewithin cap · known payee
CLEARED
Payee on allowlist. Amount within per-transaction cap.
01 / CHECKS

Three checks

Mandate, sanctions, and behavioral history, evaluated before any funds move.

02 / STATES

Three states

CLEARED, HELD, or FLAGGED: every request gets one stamped decision, not a silent pass.

03 / RECORD

One record

Every decision writes to a tamper-evident audit log: real evidence if a payment is disputed.

"A valid signature is a valid signature."

Every payment system before this one relied on something checking whether a payment was legitimate before the money moved: a card network's fraud team, a chargeback, a KYC form. An autonomous agent settling in stablecoins has none of that. Just a signed authorization and a receiving address.

Company

Building the trust layer for agentic payments.

Kova is a two-person team building KYA as its first product. We're early, heads-down on the core gateway, not yet in production.

Deploying agents that pay for things? Let's talk before you ship it.

Product

The compliance gateway for autonomous payments.

KYA sits between an agent's signed payment authorization and the funds actually moving: screening, checking, and stamping every request before settlement.

KYA Console · Queue CONCEPT PREVIEW
agent-7f2c→cloudvec.io
12.40 USDC
CLEARED
agent-7f2c→newhost-relay
340.00 USDC
FLAGGED
agent-3a91→data-feed-3
900.00 USDC
HELD
agent-3a91→data-feed-3
0.08 USDC
CLEARED

A concept preview of the KYA console. The interface isn't built yet: this is the shape we're designing toward.

The assumption that broke

A valid signature is a valid signature.

Every payment system before this one relied on something checking whether a payment was legitimate before the money moved: a card network's fraud team, a chargeback, a KYC form. An autonomous agent settling in stablecoins has none of that. Just a signed authorization and a receiving address.

0x7f3a19…c21c
AUTHORIZED · sig valid
Sanctioned wallet
0x7f3a19…c21c
AUTHORIZED · sig valid
Runaway agent, budget already exceeded
0x7f3a19…c21c
AUTHORIZED · sig valid
One of forty wallets in a coordinated cluster

To a payment processor, all three look identical. KYA is the layer that tells them apart.

Architecture

Where KYA sits.

Agent signed request KYA Gateway mandate · sanctions behavior check CLEARED HELD / FLAGGED Settlement funds move Review queue human decides
How it works

Three checks, before settlement.

Mandate check

Every agent operates under a spending mandate its owner signed before deployment: allowed payees, a per-transaction ceiling, a cumulative ceiling. The request is checked against it first.

01

Sanctions & behavior screening

The payee is screened against sanctions lists. The request is checked against that specific agent's own settlement history: a new payee, an outlier amount, or an unusual hour all raise the bar.

02

Stamped decision

CLEARED, HELD, or FLAGGED. The decision and its reasoning are written to a tamper-evident audit log, so a merchant has real evidence if a payment is ever disputed.

03
Sample output

Every decision is a record.

TimeAgentPayeeAmountCheckDecisionHash
14:02:11agent-7f2ccloudvec.io12.40 USDCmandate okCLEAREDa91f…02c4
14:02:56agent-7f2ccloudvec.io12.40 USDCmandate okCLEAREDbd10…7e31
14:07:33agent-7f2cnewhost-relay340.00 USDCnew payeeFLAGGED2c6a…f908
14:11:02agent-3a91data-feed-30.08 USDCmandate okCLEAREDe440…11ab
14:14:47agent-3a91data-feed-3900.00 USDCcumulative capHELD9f02…c377
Illustrative log: Kova has no live transactions yet. This is the shape of the record KYA writes.
FAQ

Common questions.

Does KYA hold or custody funds?

No. KYA is a decisioning layer: it evaluates a payment request and returns CLEARED, HELD, or FLAGGED. Settlement happens on the underlying rail, not inside KYA.

What does KYA check against?

A spending mandate set by the agent's owner, sanctions screening on the payee, and the requesting agent's own settlement history for behavioral outliers.

Is KYA live in production?

Not yet. We're actively building the core gateway. If you're deploying agents that pay for things and want to be part of early testing, reach out.

Want to see KYA against your own agent's payment flow?

Company

Kova builds trust infrastructure for machine-to-machine payments.

KYA is our first product: the compliance gateway that sits between an autonomous agent's signed payment and the funds actually moving.

Agent-to-agent and agent-to-merchant payments are coming whether or not the trust infrastructure exists yet. Every payment system that came before relied on a human-shaped checkpoint: a fraud team, a chargeback process, a KYC form. None of that applies to a wallet signing its own transactions in stablecoins. We think the gap between "a valid signature" and "a legitimate payment" is the piece worth building first, and we're building it.

Team

Founding team.

op-01
Kendis Ebeye
CO-FOUNDER
op-02
Ewherido Oghenemine
CO-FOUNDER
Status

Where we are.

Early, and heads-down.

Kova is currently building KYA's first version: the mandate check, sanctions screening, and audit log described on the product page. We're not live yet. If you're deploying agents that pay for things, or building the rails they'll pay over, we'd like to hear what you need before we finalize the design.

Building something agents will pay through?

Contact

Let's talk.

Email is the fastest way to reach us right now, and we read and reply ourselves.

op-01
Kendis Ebeye
CO-FOUNDER
op-02
Ewherido Oghenemine
CO-FOUNDER

Click an address to open a Gmail draft to that founder, or hit "Copy" if you'd rather paste it into another mail app.

Legal

Privacy Policy.

How Kova collects, uses, and protects information on this site and, once it launches, through the KYA product.

Last updated: September 2026

1. Overview

Kova ("we", "us", "our") builds KYA, a compliance gateway for autonomous agent payments. This policy covers the website you're on now. KYA itself is not yet in production; once it is, this policy will be updated to describe how payment-request data is handled before that launch.

2. Information we collect

This site does not use cookies, analytics scripts, or third-party trackers. We do not collect information automatically as you browse it.

If you email a founder through this site, we receive whatever information is in that email: your address, name, and message content, along with anything you choose to share about your use case.

3. How we use information

We use the contents of an email you send us to reply to you and to understand whether KYA fits what you're building. We don't use it for anything else.

4. Sharing

We don't sell personal information, and we don't share it with third parties, except where required by law.

5. Data retention

We keep email correspondence for as long as it's useful to our conversation with you, or until you ask us to delete it.

6. Your rights

You can ask us what we hold about you, or ask us to delete it, at any time by emailing either founder listed on the Contact page.

7. Changes to this policy

If this policy changes, we'll update the date at the top of this page. Material changes, particularly once KYA is handling live payment data, will be called out clearly rather than folded in silently.

8. Contact

Questions about this policy can go to either founder on the .

Legal

Terms and Conditions.

The terms that apply to using this website.

Last updated: September 2026

1. Acceptance of terms

By using this website, you agree to these terms. If you don't agree with them, please don't use the site.

2. About this site

This site is informational: it describes Kova and KYA, the compliance gateway we're building for autonomous agent payments. KYA is not yet live in production. Nothing on this site is an offer to provide a live compliance or payments service today.

3. Acceptable use

You agree not to misuse this site: no scraping it at disruptive volume, attempting to interfere with how it runs, or using it to distribute anything unlawful.

4. Intellectual property

The Kova and KYA names, the content of this site, and its design belong to Kova. You're welcome to link to it or reference it with attribution; you don't have permission to reproduce it wholesale elsewhere.

5. No warranty

This site, and any early access to KYA offered through it, is provided as-is while the product is in development. We make no guarantee that it is complete, error-free, or fit for a particular purpose at this stage.

6. Limitation of liability

To the extent permitted by law, Kova isn't liable for damages arising from your use of this site, including from information on it turning out to be outdated as the product changes during development.

7. Third-party links

Email links on this site open Gmail's compose window in a new tab. We don't control Gmail and aren't responsible for it.

8. Changes to these terms

We may update these terms as the product moves from development toward production. We'll update the date at the top of this page when we do.

9. Contact

Questions about these terms can go to either founder on the .