Google's AI Agent Payments Protocol (AP2)

Today, Google announced the Agent Payments Protocol (AP2), an open protocol developed with leading payments and technology companies to securely initiate and transact agent-led payments across platforms. The protocol can be used as an extension of the Agent2Agent (A2A) protocol and Model Context Protocol (MCP). In concert with industry rules and standards, it establishes a payment-agnostic framework for users, merchants, and payments providers to transact with confidence across all types of payment methods.

We’re collaborating with a diverse group of more than 60 organizations to help shape the future of agentic payments, including Adyen, American Express, Ant International, Coinbase, Etsy, Forter, Intuit, JCB, Mastercard, Mysten Labs, Paypal, Revolut, Salesforce, ServiceNow, UnionPay International, Worldpay, and more.

Why is a protocol needed?

AI agents are capable of transacting on behalf of users, which creates a need to establish a common foundation to securely authenticate, validate, and convey an agent’s authority to transact. While today’s payment systems generally assume a human is directly clicking "buy" on a trusted surface, the rise of autonomous agents and their ability to initiate a payment breaks this fundamental assumption and raises critical questions that AP2 helps to address, including:

• Authorization: Proving that a user gave an agent the specific authority to make a particular purchase.

• Authenticity: Enabling a merchant to be sure that an agent's request accurately reflects the user's true intent. 

• Accountability: Determining accountability if a fraudulent or incorrect transaction occurs. 

AP2 is an open, shared protocol that provides a common language for secure, compliant transactions between agents and merchants, helping to prevent a fragmented ecosystem. It also supports different payment types–from credit and debit cards to stablecoins and real-time bank transfers. This helps ensure a consistent, secure, and scalable experience for users and merchants, while also providing financial institutions with the clarity they need to effectively manage risk.

How it works: Establishing trust via mandates and verifiable credentials

AP2 builds trust by using Mandates—tamper-proof, cryptographically-signed digital contracts that serve as verifiable proof of a user's instructions. These mandates are signed by verifiable credentials (VCs) and act as the foundational evidence for every transaction.

Mandates address the two primary ways a user will shop with an agent:

• Real-time purchases (human present): When you ask an agent, “Find me new white running shoes,” your request is captured in an initial Intent Mandate. This provides the auditable context for the entire interaction in a transaction process. After the agent presents a cart with the shoes you want, your approval signs a Cart Mandate. This is a critical step that creates a secure, unchangeable record of the exact items and price, ensuring what you see is what you pay for.

• Delegated tasks (human not present): When you delegate a task like, “Buy concert tickets the moment they go on sale,” you sign a detailed Intent Mandate upfront. This mandate specifies the rules of engagement—price limits, timing, and other conditions. It serves as verifiable, pre-authorized proof that can allow the agent to automatically generate a Cart Mandate on your behalf once your precise conditions are met.

In both scenarios, this chain of evidence culminates in securely linking your payment method to the verified contents of the Cart Mandate. This complete sequence—from intent, to cart, to payment—creates a non-repudiable audit trail that answers the critical questions of authorization and authenticity, providing a clear foundation for accountability.

Unlocking new commerce experiences

AP2’s flexible design provides a foundation to support both simple and entirely new commercial models. Let’s consider a few examples below, which all assume Intent Mandates have been signed on behalf of a user: 

• Smarter shopping: A customer discovers a winter jacket they want is unavailable in a specific color, so they tell their agent: "I really want this jacket in green, and I'm willing to pay up to 20% more for it." The agent then monitors prices and availability and automatically executes a secure purchase the moment that specific variant is found, capturing a high-intent sale that would have otherwise been lost.

• Personalized offers: A shopper tells their agent they want a new bicycle for an upcoming trip from a specific merchant. Their agent communicates this information—which includes the trip's date—to the merchant, whose own agent can respond by creating a custom, time-sensitive bundle offer that includes the bike, a helmet, and a travel rack at a 15% discount, turning a simple query into a more valuable sale.

• Coordinated tasks: A user is planning a weekend trip and tells their agent: "Book me a round-trip flight and a hotel in Palm Springs for the first weekend of November, with a total budget of $700." The agent can then interact with both airline and hotel agents, as well as online travel agencies and booking platforms, and once it finds a combination that fits the budget, it can execute both cryptographically-signed bookings simultaneously.

Support for emerging payments systems

AP2 is designed as a universal protocol, providing security and trust for a variety of payments like stablecoins and cryptocurrencies. To accelerate support for the web3 ecosystem, in collaboration with Coinbase, Ethereum Foundation, MetaMask and other leading organizations, we have extended the core constructs of AP2 and launched the A2A x402 extension, a production-ready solution for agent-based crypto payments. Extensions like these will help shape the evolution of cryptocurrency integrations within the core AP2 protocol. 

What’s next: A call for collaboration 

AP2 provides a trusted foundation to fuel a new era of AI-driven commerce. It establishes the core building blocks for secure transactions, creating clear opportunities for the industry–including networks, issuers, merchants, technology providers, and end users–to innovate on adjacent areas like seamless agent authorization and decentralized identity. We are committed to evolving this protocol in an open, collaborative process, including through standards bodies, and  invite the entire payments and technology community to build this future with us. 

Many of the partners building A2A agents have extended their support to AP2. This growing ecosystem will continue to make their agents available in our AI Agent Marketplace, including new, transactable experiences enabled by AP2. For example, enterprise companies could use AP2 for B2B applications, such as enabling autonomous procurement of partner-built solutions via Google Cloud Marketplace or the automatic scaling of software licenses based upon real-time needs.

To get started, visit our public GitHub repository to review the complete technical specification, documentation, and reference implementations. Moving forward, this repository will be updated regularly with additional reference implementations from Google and innovations from the community to demonstrate the power and scalability of AP2.

Support from our ecosystem

• Accenture: “Google Cloud's Agent Payments Protocol (AP2) complements the Agent2Agent protocol and Model Context Protocol to provide a unified framework for agents to transact,” “Innovations like this will enable many of the agentic solutions that reinvent payments for clients – not only for today’s needs, but for the evolving models of future commerce.” – Scott Alfieri, Google Business lead at Accenture
• Adobe: “Adobe is proud to work with Google to advance secure and authenticated agentic commerce - our role in the Agent Payments Protocol (AP2) underscores our commitment to trusted, AI-driven experiences. With Adobe Commerce and AI agents powering customer journeys, we are focused on delivering secure, reliable, and authentic transactions for businesses and consumers."  - Loni Stark, VP of Strategy and Product at Adobe
• Adyen: "Agentic commerce is not just about a consumer-facing chatbot, but about the underlying infrastructure that powers it all. Adyen’s collaboration on Google’s Agent Payments Protocol (AP2) is a natural extension of our mission to provide the merchants with the payments building blocks for tomorrow’s commerce. We're excited to help establish a common rulebook that ensures security and interoperability for everyone involved in the payments ecosystem." - Ingo Uytdehaage, Co-CEO at Adyen
• Airwallex: "Airwallex is thrilled to support Google’s Agent Payments Protocol (AP2). This is a critical step forward in building a secure, interoperable ecosystem for agentic AI payments. This protocol gives businesses and consumers the confidence to delegate tasks to AI agents, aligning with our mission to build the future of finance by empowering businesses globally.” - Jacob Dai, Co-Founder & CTO at Airwallex
• American Express: “With the rise of AI-driven commerce, trust and accountability are more important than ever. American Express is excited to contribute to the creation of AP2 as a protocol intended to protect customers and enable participation in the next generation of digital payments.” - Luke Gebb, EVP, Amex Digital Labs, American Express
• Ant International: "Ant International is excited to partner with Google on protocol-setting for practical AI applications in agentic commerce to unlock new merchant growth and elevate consumer experience, by leveraging our expertise in alternative payment methods and trusted AI innovations." - Jiangming Yang, Chief Innovation Officer at Ant International
• BHN: “As a trusted partner processing billions of transactions globally, BHN is excited to help shape emerging protocols like AP2 that will enable both merchants and consumers to leverage the power of stored value in secure, autonomous commerce, enabled by AI Agents.” - Nik Sathe, CPTO at BHN
• BVNK: "Stablecoins provide an obvious solution to the scaling challenges agentic systems are already facing with legacy financial infrastructure. We at BVNK were extremely excited to hear that Google has been working on solving this problem and couldn't wait to contribute" - Donald Jackson, CTO at BVNK
• Checkout.com: "Agentic commerce is reshaping the checkout moment, and Google’s Agent Payments Protocol (AP2) is a pivotal step forward. At Checkout.com, we’re proud to support open protocols that strengthen trust and give merchants the flexibility to meet their customers where they are, however they want to shop.” – Meron Colbeci, Chief Product Officer, Checkout.com
• Coinbase: "x402 and AP2 show that agent-to-agent payments aren’t just an experiment anymore, they’re becoming part of how developers actually build. Bringing x402 into AP2 to power stablecoin payments made sense - it’s a natural playground for agents to start transacting with each other and testing out crypto rails. And it’s exciting to see the idea of agents paying each other resonate with the broader AI community." – Erik Reppel, Head of Engineering at Coinbase Developer Platform
• Crossmint: “With Crossmint’s tools, developers can let agents buy anything using both credit cards or stablecoins. Our goal is to unlock instantaneous, global commerce, giving agent builders the greatest flexibility. Our partnership with Google on AP2 represents our commitment that agentic commerce wins everyone’s trust as a secure, reliable, and seamless way to transact. Time to accelerate!” – Alfonso Gomez, Co-founder at Crossmint
• Confluent: "Confluent is excited to support Google in this effort to build an open, secure, and high-trust payments protocol. Agent Payments Protocol (AP2) aligns perfectly with our vision of a real-time data-driven world, and we believe our expertise in data streaming with Apache Kafka will be critical in creating a resilient and scalable payments ecosystem for the agentic web." – Pascal Vantrepote, Partner CTO at Confluent 
• Dell: “At Dell Technologies, we’re dedicated to making agentic AI a reality for businesses worldwide. The transformative potential of agentic automation hinges on trust, security and standardization, especially for customer-facing eCommerce platforms. By supporting the Agent Payments Protocol (AP2) with Google, we’re laying the groundwork for a future where AI-driven commerce is reliable, accessible, and trusted by all." – Satish Iyer, Vice President, Innovation & Ecosystems, Office of the CTO, Dell Technologies
• Deloitte: “As Agentic Commerce rapidly emerges as a transformative force, the industry will need robust standards to empower AI agents to transact payments securely and effectively. These standards must address critical areas such as security, identity, frictionless commerce, trust, and privacy, all while providing compatibility with the existing global payments infrastructure. Deloitte is proud to help shape this evolving industry alongside Google, extending the widely adopted A2A protocol to enable agent-driven payments and commerce.” – Gopal Srinivasan, Alphabet Google Alliance Global AI & Data Leader at Deloitte Consulting LLP
• DLocal: "Payment agents are no longer an idea, they’re rapidly becoming a reality. In the dynamic emerging markets we serve, payments are fragmented and complex, from cards to local payment methods, to wallets and stablecoin.Agent Payments Protocol (AP2) turns that complexity into a single, interoperable framework, enabling agent-initiated payments that are safe, seamless, and designed to boost merchant conversion while keeping users in control." - Pedro Arnt, CEO at DLocal
• Ebanx: "Agent Payments Protocol  (AP2) will power the next era of commerce, and to build a safe and secure environment for this is now the most important step. EBANX is proud to be part of this effort with Google." - Eduardo de Abreu, Vice President of Product at Ebanx
• Eigen Labs: “Google’s new Agent Payments Protocol (AP2) is a major step toward a future where AI agents are meaningful economic actors, whether that’s on behalf of humans, organizations or themselves. EigenCloud is proud to partner with Google on this initiative to provide the verifiability infrastructure that ensures these agents are held accountable by any counterparty. Together, we’re helping create a global verifiable economy where agents can coordinate, transact, and prove their actions to humans and to each other.” - Sreeram Kannan, Founder & CEO at Eigen Labs 
• Fiuu: ""As agentic commerce reshapes payments infrastructure, Fiuu supports open protocols like A2A and AP2 to enable secure, scalable agent-to-agent transactions across multi-channel systems, advancing interoperability, trust, and inclusive payment ecosystems." - Eng Sheng Guan, CEO at Fiuu
• Forter: "At Forter we believe in the potential of agents to revolutionize commerce and we are proud to collaborate with Google in creating modern protocols that benefit brands, consumers and AI developers alongside Forter’s Trusted Agentic Commerce Protocol (TACP).” - Michael Reitblat, CEO at Forter
• Gr4vy: "We are proud to support this new open protocol (AP2). By working together as an industry, we can ensure this next chapter of payments is built on trust, transparency and flexibility." - John Lunn, CEO and Founder at Gr4vy
• Gravitee: “In the agentic world, secure and trusted transactions demand open protocols. Google’s Open Standard for Agent Payments Protocol (AP2) addresses this need. Gravitee’s Agent Mesh already supports A2A and MCP with a strong focus on security and governance, and we are committed to extending this support so customers in financial services, retail, and beyond can confidently benefit” – Linus Hakansson, Chief Product Officer at Gravitee 
• Global Fashion Group: “Integrating A2A and MCP into the Agent Payments Protocol (AP2) enables a modular, interoperable architecture with versioned contracts, making integration and testing straightforward. Modern payments, engineered for scale—secure, seamless, and built to power global commerce.” - Quy Tran, Director of Engineering at Global Fashion Group
• Intuit: “Intuit focuses on enabling the financial success of consumers, businesses, and accountants. We are excited to leverage our AI and data capabilities to help develop the open Agent Payments Protocol (AP2) to create better experiences for all. Our technologists will have the ability to use the protocol to deploy AI agents towards autonomous financial workflows as part of our done-for-you experiences for customers.” – Tapasvi Moturu, Vice President, Software Engineering at Intuit
• JCB: "JCB champions Google’s Agent Payments Protocol (AP2) initiative as the innovative and important protocol that will unlock a new era of payments, and JCB looks forward to contributing to the protocol to benefit our entire ecosystem, including our banking and payment institution partners, cardmembers, and merchants." - Shinya Kubotera, Executive Officer & Head of Strategic Innovations at JCB co., Ltd
• JusPay: "The future of payments is inherently open and interoperable - our work with UPI and the development of Hyperswitch, the world's first open-source payments orchestration platform has demonstrated this power. We believe this new protocol (AP2) provides the secure, shared foundation needed to make AI-driven commerce a reality, and we are ready to contribute our expertise to this initiative."  - Sheetal Lalwani, Co-founder at Juspay
• KCP: “NHN KCP endorses the Agent Payments Protocol (AP2) as a key advancement in the global payments ecosystem and looks forward to collaborating with global partners to help make AI-based payments more reliable, convenient, and widely adopted.” – Jae-wook Noh, Executive Managing Director at NHN KCP  
• Lightspark: “Having worked on payments at Google, I’ve seen how open and verified protocols can unlock powerful network effects. Google’s Agent Payments Protocol (AP2) is a big step toward a future where trusted AI agents transact seamlessly on our behalf. At Lightspark, we’re committed to that vision of open, global interoperability." - Alberto Martin CPO at Lightspark
• ManusAI: “Google's Agent Payments Protocol (AP2) represents a breakthrough solution that finally addresses the fundamental monetization challenges we've long faced in the agent ecosystem—enabling seamless, standardized compensation between AI agents while eliminating the unsustainable resource imbalances that have hindered true multi-agent collaboration.” - Tao Zhang, CTO at Manus
• Mastercard: “Mastercard is committed to ongoing, responsible innovation – and we are excited to be collaborating with Google, leading banks, merchants, AI platforms and other industry leaders to help shape the future of agentic commerce. These efforts include critical work with standards bodies such as the FIDO Alliance, where we are advancing verifiable credentials to capture and secure consumers’ intent in this dynamic new context. Together, we’re playing an essential role in securing the payments ecosystem – ensuring that trust and safety remain at the core of every transaction.” – Pablo Fourez, Chief Digital Officer at Mastercard 
• MetaMask: “Blockchains are the natural payment layer for agents, and Ethereum will be the backbone of this. With Agent Payments Protocol (AP2) and x402, MetaMask will deliver maximum interoperability for developers and will enable users to pay agents with full composability and choice—while retaining the security and control of true self-custody” - Marco De Rossi, AI Lead at MetaMask
• Mesh: “For AI to truly drive commerce, agents need a secure and universal way to handle payments. Google's new Agent Payments Protocol (AP2) is a huge step forward, providing the foundational framework to make this possible. We're proud to support this effort because it unlocks the full potential of agent-led commerce, particularly with programmable assets like crypto. Our technology abstracts away the complexity of the crypto ecosystem, giving agents seamless access to hundreds of wallets and exchanges and supporting over 100 tokens. This ensures payments are not just completed, but are routed through the most efficient paths to guarantee speed and success.” - Bam Azizi, CEO and co-Founder at Mesh
• Mysten Labs: “Verified agents making purchases on behalf of verified users is the next frontier for AI-powered automation.  Google's Agent Payments Protocol (AP2) combines programmable payments via modern blockchains like Sui with open protocols like A2A and MCP that are enjoying rapid growth. It's the perfect substrate for real-world agentic commerce." - Sam Blackshear, Chief Technology Officer and Co-Founder at Mysten Labs, the original contributor to Sui.
• Nexi: “We are delighted to partner with Google Cloud on AP2 in order to contribute to shape a fundamental paradigm shift in commerce. As part of our DNA of being European by scale and local by nature, we aim at empowering European merchants to continue to compete on a global scale, while delivering frictionless and personalised online shopping experiences to consumers. Leveraging Agentic AI eCommerce technology from Google Cloud, we will continue to simplify payments for our merchants and partners" – Roberto Catanzaro, Chief Business Officer Merchant Solutions at Nexi
• Okta: “Extending the A2A protocol into payments is an important step toward building a secure, interoperable foundation for commerce between AI agents. At Auth0, we’re excited to support the Agent Payments Protocol (AP2) and help ensure that future payments between AI agents are both seamless and secure.” – Stephen Lee, Vice President, Technical Strategy and Partnerships at Okta
• Payoneer: “At Payoneer, we see enormous potential in AI agents to simplify financial workflows for millions of small businesses. By supporting the Agent Payments Protocol (AP2), we’re ensuring agents can collaborate securely and seamlessly, just as our platform connects SMBs worldwide.” – Guy Shalev, Vice President of AI at Payoneer
• PayPal: "AP2 provides the critical foundation for trusted agent payments, giving the ecosystem much needed clarity on how to facilitate trusted transactions. PayPal is fully aligned with this vision and excited to build on it, bringing our commerce expertise to help extend these principles across the entire purchase journey.” - Prakhar Mehrotra, SVP and Global Head of AI at PayPal
• PwC: "PwC is committed to fostering innovation with agentic AI that focuses on maintaining trust, safety and privacy for critical tasks like payments and money movement broadly.  We believe the Agent Payments Protocol (AP2) and extension to the Agent2Agent protocol represent a significant leap forward, enhancing safety without compromising information." – Scott Likens, Global / US Chief AI Engineering Officer at PwC
• Salesforce: "With extensive expertise in powering digital commerce, Salesforce is excited to help businesses harness agentic payments at scale - creating truly frictionless commerce experiences and driving the productivity that is crucial to becoming an Agentic Enterprise today. " – Nitin Mangtani, SVP & GM Commerce & Retail Cloud at Salesforce 
• Shopee: "At Shopee, we see immense potential for agents to transform e-commerce, and believe that industry protocols such as Google’s Agent Payments Protocol (AP2) will be critical to enabling this future.” - David Chen, Chief Product Officer at Shopee 
• Worldpay: “Worldpay shares Google's vision of an open, interoperable foundation for agentic commerce, built on trust and safety to empower merchants and shoppers. The AP2 protocol represents a meaningful first step in defining how agents, merchants, and payment providers can transact securely, at scale.” – Cindy Turner, Chief Product Officer at Worldpay
• 1password: “Open protocols like A2A and AP2 are critical to driving broad adoption of AI while ensuring security and transparency remain foundational. At 1Password, we see support for digital payment credentials as just the beginning. The future is multi-agent, and managing agent access and authorization starts with securing credentials, all while upholding our core security values of privacy, transparency, and trust.” – Anand Srinivas, Vice President, Product & AI at 1Password

Get started by checking out our public Github repository to see the complete technical specification, documentation, and reference implementations.