Powering AI Commerce with the New Agent Payments Protocol (AP2) (cloud.google.com)

Google announced the Agent Payments Protocol (AP2), an open, payment-agnostic standard developed with 60+ payments and tech partners to let AI agents securely initiate and complete transactions on behalf of users. Built as an extension to Agent2Agent (A2A) and Model Context Protocol (MCP), AP2 addresses core challenges introduced by agentic commerce—authorization, authenticity, and accountability—by creating a common language and legal/technical framework so merchants, issuers, and agents can interoperate with confidence across cards, bank transfers, stablecoins, and crypto. Technically, AP2 anchors every transaction in tamper-proof, cryptographically-signed Mandates (Intent and Cart Mandates) that are validated by Verifiable Credentials, producing a non-repudiable audit trail from user intent to payment. The protocol also includes the A2A x402 extension for agent-driven crypto and stablecoin payments and provides reference implementations and specs on a public GitHub. That design enables new commerce flows—real-time buys with user approval, pre-authorized delegated purchases, coordinated multi-party bookings, and B2B autonomous procurement—while giving financial institutions the clarity to manage risk. Google and partners invite the community to extend AP2 through standards bodies and open-source contributions.