Agent payments protocol
An agent payments protocol is a standard for the payment half of an agent purchase: how an agent proves it is authorised to spend a particular person’s money, on a particular purchase, inside limits that person set in advance.
Payment is a separate problem from ordering because the trust question is different. A merchant taking an order needs to know what was requested. A payment network needs to know that a human authorised this spend and that the thing presenting the card is acting within that authorisation rather than improvising.
This is why the proposals in this area centre on a verifiable record of the shopper’s instruction, which the merchant and the payment provider can both check independently of the agent that produced it.
Why it matters to a store
For most merchants this arrives through the payment provider rather than as an integration to build. The part that stays yours is the checkout the agent has to reach before any of it applies.