Blink: Evidence-Bound Policy Authorization for Agentic Commerce
Paper, with Hadrien Padilla and Noah Edmunds. Blink Pay Inc., 2026. In publication with IEEE Xplore.
AI shopping agents can complete purchases under a buyer’s standing instructions, such as “buy only if I can return it free within 30 days of delivery with a refund to my card.” Return policies often offer several routes, each with its own fee, deadline and refund type, and combining terms across routes can approve a purchase the merchant never offered. Blink is an authorization layer that evaluates each route on its own, treats unstated terms as unknown rather than favourable, and approves a purchase only when a single route meets every condition.