On Tuesday, Google announced a new, open protocol for purchases initiated by AI agents—automated software programs that can shop and make decisions for users. This new system, called the Agent Payments Protocol (AP2), has backing from over 60 merchants and financial institutions. It is designed to be interoperable across AI platforms, payment systems, and vendors, providing a transparent, traceable paper trail for every transaction.
In a public announcement, Google executives emphasized their commitment to an open, collaborative process for the protocol’s evolution, inviting the entire technology community to help build this new future of commerce. The full specifications for AP2 have been made publicly available on GitHub.
How the AP2 Protocol Works
The protocol is built for a future where AI agents routinely shop on behalf of users and engage in complex, real-time interactions with retailers’ AI agents. For example, a user could ask their agent to book a weekend vacation with a specified budget and dates. The agent could then interact with both airline and hotel agents to find a suitable combination and execute both bookings simultaneously with a cryptographically signed transaction.
To ensure user control and security, AP2 requires two separate approvals before a purchase is made. The first is an “intent mandate,” which authorizes the agent to search for a specific item and negotiate with sellers. The second is the “cart mandate,” which provides final approval for a purchase once a specific item has been found. The protocol also has a provision for fully automated purchases, where an agent can generate a cart mandate automatically. These scenarios require a more detailed intent mandate upfront, specifying price limits, timing, and other rules to maintain an auditable trail for fraud prevention.
Industry Support and Competition
In collaboration with cryptocurrency companies like Coinbase, MetaMask, and the Ethereum Foundation, Google also developed an extension to the AP2 protocol that integrates the x402 protocol, which enables AI-driven purchases from crypto wallets.
The success of AP2 will depend on its adoption by other players in the ecosystem. However, it already has the support of major financial providers such as Mastercard, American Express, and PayPal, giving the protocol a significant immediate footprint. Other companies are also working on their own agentic purchasing systems. Perplexity, for example, offers a “Buy With Pro” service in its agentic browser, and the payment provider Stripe has developed its own software tools for agentic purchasing on its platform, though they are not as comprehensive as AP2.
What The Author Thinks
Google’s launch of AP2 is a proactive and strategic move to establish the foundational rules for a new era of digital commerce. By creating an open, interoperable standard, Google is positioning itself as a leader in a technology that will become central to how consumers shop. This is a smart strategy to avoid the fragmentation that plagued early digital markets and could give Google a long-term advantage by making its ecosystem the default for agentic transactions. Instead of locking others out, Google is inviting the industry in to build on its foundation, which is a powerful way to secure a dominant position while appearing to champion openness and collaboration.
Featured image credit: Kaboompics via Pexels
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