Agent Credential (KYA) — agent-specific strengthening
A storey above the identity floor. Never the floor itself.
An Agent Passport is not an Agent Credential. The Passport is identity: who this agent is, who operates it, and what is published about it. A Credential is a separate, specialist strengthening product with its own evidence and its own scope.
An agent does not need a Credential to have an ECZ-ID. The free Agent Passport is the floor, and it is free because the identity layer is defined that way.
The correction
If you take one thing from this page, take this.
The floor is the free Passport
Identity is free. A Passport is never metered, and issuing one consults no entitlement. A Credential is never the entry point to having an ECZ-ID, and there is no route in which one is required first.
It is a separate product, not a tier
It is not a paid level of the Passport, an upgrade path from it, or a thing the free flow leads to. It sits on its own axis with its own evidence and its own scope.
Most agents will never hold one
That is the expected outcome, not a shortfall. Not holding a Credential says nothing about an agent, in the same way an absent record says nothing about the software behind it.
No public ECZ-ID Passport found is not a safety finding. It means this identifier resolves to no published record — nothing more. Most software has no ECZ-ID yet.
What it addresses
One question the identity layer deliberately leaves open.
A Passport publishes a declaration
It records who the agent is and who operates it. It is identity, not assessment. DECLARED does not mean independently verified. It records what an organisation says about itself, with the date it said it — not the outcome of a check.
Verifying the operator does not verify the machine
A VERIFIED or ASSURED Parent does not verify the agent. The parent organisation's identity is verified. The machine is not. An agent linked to a VERIFIED Parent is described exactly that way — linked to a VERIFIED Parent — never as a verified agent.
So there is a question neither answers
Whether this one agent can carry evidence about itself, beyond what its operator says about it. That is the question the Agent Credential exists for, and it is the only question it takes on.
Its own evidence
A Credential carries evidence about the individual agent rather than about the organisation behind it. What that evidence is, and what it is worth, is agreed in scope before anything is issued — there is no fixed published checklist today, and inventing one here would be a claim about work nobody has agreed to do.
Its own scope
A Credential covers what it states it covers and nothing beyond it. Scope is part of the artefact rather than a caveat attached to it, so a reader can tell what was examined and what was not. ECZ-ID tells you what is published and by whom. What that is worth in your context is your policy's decision, not ours.
An ECZ-ID does not make an agent safe, certified, approved or compliant, and buying one does not make you compliant with anything.
Side by side
Two artefacts, two questions.
| Question | Free Agent Passport | Agent Credential (KYA) |
|---|---|---|
| What is the subject? | One logical agent operated by your organisation. Versions, replicas and regions are the same agent. | One specific agent, chosen because something about that agent warrants more than a declaration. |
| What does it establish? | Who the agent is, who operates it, and what is published about it right now. | Agent-specific evidence within a stated scope, layered on top of the identity the Passport already carries. |
| Does it make the agent verified? | No. It publishes a declared identity and an operator relationship, and says so on the record. | No. It carries evidence within a scope. That is not a certification, an approval or a seal, and nothing here is one. |
| Who needs it? | Any agent whose operator wants an identity someone outside the organisation can resolve and re-check. | Very few agents, in situations where a counterparty needs more than a declaration and has said so. |
| What is the price? | £0. No card required. Permanent, and never metered. | Not published. Scope decides it, so it is agreed in a conversation rather than listed on a page. |
| Does your ECZ-ID change? | No. It is permanent from the moment it is issued. | No. A Credential is layered on the identity that already exists; the identifier, the record and the resolver page are untouched. |
Your ECZ-ID does not change. Taking a Credential, declining one, or letting a conversation about one go nowhere leaves every identifier, record and resolver page exactly as it was.
Availability
By arrangement. There is nothing to buy on this page.
By arrangement — no self-serve purchase, and no published price.
There is no checkout for an Agent Credential anywhere on this site, and no price list held back behind a form. The scope of the work determines what it involves, so the honest first step is a conversation about the agent and about what a counterparty is actually asking you to show them.
Do this first: get the Passport
It is £0, permanent, and it is the layer a Credential would sit on. Nothing about starting there commits you to anything after it.
Then check which question you have
Very often the real question is whether the organisation is who it says it is. That is Parent strengthening — a different axis, with a defined set of checks on the organisation of record.
Then bring the requirement
Who is asking, what they want to see, and what they will do with it. A Credential written without that is a document nobody specified and nobody can use.
The floor is free. Reach for the storey above it only if someone has asked you to.
Publish the identity first. It is the part every agent benefits from, it is the part a counterparty can resolve today, and it is the part that has no price attached to it at all.