The Era of Agentic Commerce starts now with the New Agent Payments Protocol (AP2)
What is AP2?
At Google we just (Sept 2025) announced Agent Payments Protocol (AP2) — an open protocol developed with leading payments & tech companies. It’s designed to securely initiate and transact agent-led payments across platforms. AP2 works as an extension of existing protocols: Agent2Agent (A2A) and Model Context Protocol (MCP).
Why It’s Needed for Agentic Commerce
As AI agents grow more capable and autonomous, they will perform actions like purchasing on behalf of users. That breaks many of the assumptions in current payments infrastructure (e.g. a human explicitly clicking “buy”). AP2 helps address key concerns:
• Authorization: Proving a user granted the agent the right to make a specific purchase.
• Authenticity: Ensuring a merchant can be confident that the agent’s request correctly reflects the user’s intent.
• Accountability: Establishing who is responsible in case of fraud or incorrect transactions.
How It Works: Trust via Mandates & Verifiable Credentials
AP2 introduces Mandates, which are cryptographically signed digital contracts. These act as tamper-proof proof of user instructions. Mandates are backed by Verifiable Credentials (VCs).
• There are two main workflows that can applied.
1. Real-Time Purchases (user present):
• First an Intent Mandate captures what the user wants.
• Then after selecting items, a Cart Mandate is signed, recording exactly what the user is buying.
2. Delegated Tasks (user not present):
• The user pre-signs an Intent Mandate specifying rules (price limits, timing, etc.).
• The agent can generate a Cart Mandate automatically when those conditions are met.
• The chain from Intent → Cart → Payment forms a non-repudiable audit trail, enabling proof for authorization/authenticity/accountability.
What It Unlocks: New Commerce Models
AP2’s flexible framework enables more sophisticated agentic commerce. For Example:
• Smarter shopping: Agent monitors availability, price, etc., and auto-executes purchase once desired variant appears.
• Personalized offers: Agent shares intent (e.g., “need bicycle by date X”), merchant agent responds with bundle offers or discounts tailored to that intent.
• Coordinated tasks: e.g., booking flight + hotel within a budget, across different vendors, with unified scheduling & payments.
Support for Emerging Payment Systems & Web3
• AP2 is payment-method agnostic: supports cards, real-time bank transfers, stablecoins, etc.
• There is an extension called A2A x402 for crypto / stablecoin payments, in collaboration with Coinbase, Ethereum Foundation, MetaMask and others.
Ecosystem & Collaboration
• Over 60 organizations are collaborating on AP2: examples include Adyen, American Express, Ant International, Coinbase, Etsy, Mastercard, PayPal, Revolut, Salesforce, ServiceNow, UnionPay International, Worldpay, Mysten Labs, etc. where they have emphasized how AP2 enables trust, interoperability, security, and enabling novel AI commerce experiences.
What’s Next / Call to Action
• Google has made the technical specification, documentation, and reference implementations publicly available on GitHub.
• The protocol will evolve in collaboration with standards bodies and the broader payments / technology community.
• Not just consumer-facing: AP2 could enable enterprise / B2B scenarios (e.g. autonomous procurement, dynamic licensing).
Ramifications
• If you work in payments infrastructure, eCommerce, fintech, or AI, this is a major development: defines how AI agents will safely and securely conduct financial transactions.
• Expect shifts in UX / product design: users likely to be asked to define mandates more explicitly; more automation but with checks.
• Regulatory, compliance, and risk teams will need to grasp these new agentic models.
• For startups in Web3 / stablecoin / crypto, this opens doors for integrating into mainstream commerce more safely.
Link to announcement blog can be found here.
