A payment-agnostic open standard that lets autonomous AI agents authorize and complete transactions securely via cryptographically signed "mandates," removing manual checkout.
AP2 (Agent Payments Protocol) is a payment-agnostic open standard that lets autonomous AI agents authorize and complete transactions securely. It replaces manual checkout with cryptographically signed "mandates," verifiable instructions that capture what a user or their agent has agreed to buy and under what limits, so a payment can proceed without a human clicking through checkout each time.
Being payment-agnostic, it does not tie the flow to any single card network or wallet. AP2 belongs to the same family of agent standards as the Model Context Protocol, WebMCP, and A2UI, and it gives an AI agent a trusted way to act on a purchase. It also connects to the wider question of paying for what agents consume, explored in CAPS.
