AP2 (Agent Payments Protocol)

All of payments assumes that a human presses the button. Once an agent presses it, someone has to answer the awkward question of who is liable when it buys the wrong thing. AP2, announced in September 2025 with some sixty partners including Mastercard, American Express, PayPal and Adyen, answers with mandates: cryptographically signed statements. An intent mandate captures the brief, say "buy the tickets the moment they go on sale, no more than $80". A cart mandate approves one specific basket.

Together the mandates form an audit trail that issuers and acquirers can examine when a dispute lands. The protocol is built as an extension of Google's A2A and plays along with MCP. It is payment-method agnostic: cards, bank transfers and, through an extension built with Coinbase, stablecoins via x402.