Google’s AP2 Gives Developers New Tools to Build Agentic Payments

Google launched an open protocol for agentic payments that enables agents based on any large language model to purchase items over the internet.

What’s new: Agent Payments Protocol (AP2) is designed for buyers and sellers to securely initiate, authorize, and close purchases. AP2 works with Google’s A2A and Anthropic’s similar MCP, open protocols that instruct agents or provide access to data and APIs. It manages diverse payment types including credit cards, bank transfers, digital payments, and cryptocurrency.

How it works: Agentic payments pose challenges to security, such as manipulation by malicious actors, and liability, particularly with respect to whether a user or agent is to blame for mistakes. AP2 aims to solve these problems by using cryptographically signed contracts called mandates. Three distinct mandates record the terms of the purchase, its fulfillment, and the user’s authorization of payment. If a fraudulent or incorrect transaction occurs, the payment processor can consult this record to see which party is accountable. To buy an item using AP2:

An intent mandate specifies rules for the purchase such as price limits, timing, and the item’s attributes. It may create an intent mandate while a user is present or ahead of time. For instance, if a buyer instructs an agent to “buy [brand and model] running shoes the moment they go on sale,” the agent will prompt the user to specify and authorize the terms of the mandate, such as the desired top price, size, and color.
A cart mandate covers the other end of the sale. This contract describes the contents of the virtual shopping cart including a description of items sold, their prices, and terms of the deal.
A payment mandate tells a payment network (a financial institution plus payment processor that moves funds electronically) that the transaction was authorized by a user or an agent, so it can complete the transaction.

Behind the news: Many companies have experimented with agentic payments with varying degrees of success. For example, last year Stripe launched an agentic payment toolkit that issues a one-time debit card for each purchase. This approach reduces risk, but it requires Stripe’s payment system, particular models, and specific agentic frameworks. Google’s approach is more comprehensive, initially including more than 60 partners including payment processors, financial institutions, and software giants.

Why it matters: AP2 opens up automated sales in which any participant can buy and sell, and it does this in a standardized, flexible way. For instance, a user could tell an agent to book a vacation in a specific location with a specific budget. The agent could transmit those requirements to many sellers’ agents that might assemble customized packages to meet the user’s demands. Then the user’s agent could either present the packages to the user or choose one itself. The buyer would get the vacation they want and the seller would make a valuable sale, while AI did the haggling.

We’re thinking: The internet didn’t make travel agents obsolete, it made them agentic!