Google today introduced the Agent Payments Protocol (AP2), an open protocol designed to let AI agents initiate and settle payments on behalf of a user. The protocol, backed by more than 60 partners including Mastercard, PayPal, American Express, Coinbase, and Salesforce, uses cryptographically signed digital contracts called ‘mandates’ to create a verifiable chain of authorization from intent to payment.

Current online payment systems assume a human is clicking ‘buy,’ Google said in a blog post authored by Stavan Parikh, VP/GM, Payments, Google, and Rao Surapaneni, VP/GM, Business Applications Platform, Google Cloud. ‘The rise of autonomous agents and their ability to initiate a payment breaks this fundamental assumption,’ they wrote. AP2 creates a non-repudiable audit trail by capturing three stages: an Intent Mandate (the user’s instruction), a Cart Mandate (the exact items and price), and the final Payment. For delegated tasks such as ‘buy concert tickets the moment they go on sale,’ the user signs a mandate upfront specifying price limits and conditions, allowing the agent to execute automatically.

The protocol is payment-agnostic, supporting cards, bank transfers, stablecoins, and other cryptocurrencies via an extension called x402 developed with Coinbase, Ethereum Foundation, and MetaMask. AP2 extends Google’s existing Agent2Agent (A2A) protocol and the Model Context Protocol (MCP).

Industry reaction was measured but broadly supportive. PayPal’s Prakhar Mehrotra said AP2 ‘provides a strong, adaptable foundation to collectively address’ the challenges of agentic commerce, adding that ‘The goal isn’t necessarily one single standard to “win,” but rather convergence around those core principles.’ Mastercard’s Pablo Fourez cast it as responsible innovation, citing work with standards bodies such as the FIDO Alliance on securing a user’s intent. Worldpay’s Cindy Turner was more skeptical: some in the industry, she said, believe ‘they can control an ecosystem in which 100% of transactions will have a human in the middle,’ and she is ‘a bit skeptical’ they can mandate it.