Learn / Protocols and standards
The Agent Payments Protocol for merchants
Google published the Agent Payments Protocol on 16 September 2025, saying it was built with more than sixty collaborating organisations. It addresses authorisation rather than discovery: how a merchant can trust that an agent had authority to spend on somebody’s behalf, which is the question that decides whether agent purchases are safe to accept at scale.
Why authorisation is the hard part
A merchant accepting an agent initiated payment is accepting a transaction where no human was present at the moment of purchase. That is uncomfortable for the same reason card-not-present transactions were: the usual evidence that somebody agreed is absent.
Without a way to demonstrate authority, agent purchases carry dispute risk that scales with volume, and that risk is what would eventually make merchants refuse them.
What it means for you in practice
Almost nothing to implement, and one useful conversation to have. Ask your payment provider two things: how agent initiated payments are identified in their system, and what evidence of authorisation is retained if a transaction is disputed.
The answers vary by provider and jurisdiction, and knowing them before volume arrives is considerably better than discovering them during a dispute.
How it relates to the others
AP2 is not an alternative to ACP or UCP. Those largely cover discovery and transacting; this covers authorisation. A complete agent purchase touches both kinds of problem, which is part of why the four names a merchant meets do not sort into a simple competition.
See ACP, UCP, AP2 and MCP explained.
The related mechanism
A cart mandate is the concrete artefact this kind of protocol produces: a record of what the shopper authorised, against which the purchase can be checked. See cart mandates explained for merchants and how agent payments actually settle.
Questions
Does this affect my chargeback exposure?
That is the question it exists to make answerable, and the specifics depend on your payment provider and your jurisdiction rather than on the protocol alone. Ask your provider what evidence of authorisation they will hold and what it means for disputes.
Do I need to do anything?
For most merchants, no, because this is implemented between agents, payment providers and platforms. What is worth doing is asking your provider how agent initiated payments are treated.
Is this the same as ACP or UCP?
No. Those are largely about discovery and transacting. AP2 is about authorisation. They address different parts of the same journey and are not alternatives.