AP2
Agent Payments Protocol
A signed, notarized shopping list, with a spending limit the bank can check before paying.
Reality check
Early. Real use is mostly inside other protocols, like the AP2 extension in UCP's latest release; consumer-facing AP2 checkout is still limited.
How it works
When an agent pays, the bank and merchant need answers to "did a real person agree to this?" and "who's liable if it goes wrong?" AP2 answers with mandates, tamper-proof signed records of your instructions:
- An intent mandate captures what you asked for ("concert tickets, under $200, this week").
- A cart mandate locks the exact items and price.
- A payment mandate tells the card network an agent was involved.
Version 0.2 adds "Human Not Present" purchases: you pre-sign the rules, and the agent buys later when conditions are met, say when tickets go on sale at 3 a.m. It works with cards, bank transfers and stablecoins. AP2 authorizes payments; it doesn't process them.
Who's behind it
Google announced it on September 16, 2025 with more than 60 organizations, including American Express, Coinbase, Mastercard, PayPal and Salesforce. On April 28, 2026 Google released v0.2 and handed AP2 to the FIDO Alliance (the group behind passkeys), which formed working groups chaired by members from Google, OpenAI, CVS Health, Visa and Mastercard.
Mastercard's Verifiable Intent, a similar auditable record of what a user approved, co-developed with Google, went to FIDO at the same time. FIDO's work is only months old, so v0.2 isn't yet a FIDO-approved standard.