Google has introduced the Agent Payments Protocol (AP2), an open framework developed with more than 60 payments and technology companies to support secure, agent-led transactions across platforms and payment methods.
Built to be used as an extension to Google’s earlier Agent2Agent (A2A) and Model Context Protocol (MCP) frameworks, AP2 is designed to be payment-agnostic, supporting credit cards, bank transfers, and cryptocurrencies. At its core, the protocol uses cryptographically signed “mandates” to establish trust in every transaction.
In real-time scenarios, users provide an Intent Mandate to guide an agent’s search and then approve a Cart Mandate to confirm the purchase details, Google said. For delegated tasks, a more detailed Intent Mandate allows the agent to act automatically under predefined conditions, ensuring transactions remain secure and auditable even without the user present.
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