Agentic Commerce Has Arrived

"AP2 seeks to answer those questions. The protocol provides a framework for authenticating and validating AI-led transactions, enabling banks, merchants, and consumers to trust the outcome. The solution uses what Google called "tamper-proof, cryptographically-signed digital" mandates with verifiable credentials. A mandate is a digital contract between the shopper and her AI agent. It proves what she asked the agent to do and under what conditions. That mandate then becomes the evidence that merchants and payment providers can rely on if she disputes the transaction."

"While AP2 focuses on trust and authorization, Stripe's Agentic Commerce Protocol focuses on turning conversations into transactions. ACP provides merchants with a way to present products, pricing, and checkout information in a format usable by AI agents. Behind the scenes, Stripe issues a Shared Payment Token that passes payment details from the AI agent to the merchant without exposing the shopper's credentials. The order itself flows into the merchant's backend via ACP to be accepted and fulfil"

AI shopping agents are becoming a viable ecommerce sales channel as Google and Stripe introduced tools for AI-related purchases. Standards such as Google's Agent Payments Protocol (AP2) and Stripe's Agentic Commerce Protocol (ACP) create transaction norms for agent-based commerce. AP2 provides a framework for authenticating and validating AI-led transactions using tamper-proof, cryptographically-signed digital mandates with verifiable credentials. A mandate records the shopper's instructions and conditions and serves as evidence for merchants and payment providers in disputes. ACP enables agents to convert conversations into transactions by presenting product, pricing, and checkout data to agents and using a Shared Payment Token to protect shopper credentials.

Read at Practical Ecommerce