Agentic Commerce

Transactions initiated and completed by AI agents on a user's behalf, through protocols like x402, AP2 and the Agentic Commerce Protocol.

term
Agentic Commerce
category
commerce
short_def
Transactions initiated and completed by AI agents on a user's behalf, through protocols like x402, AP2 and the Agentic Commerce Protocol.
long_def
Spans micropayments for data and tools (x402), mandate-based settlement across rails (AP2) and in-conversation checkout (ACP / Instant Checkout). The shared challenge is authorization: proving the agent had the user's permission to spend.
see_also
x402 agent-identity
etymology_origin
— verify-against-primary-at-build ↗ https://www.coinbase.com/developer-platform/discover/launches/x402 — 'agentic commerce' is an umbrella category term popularised across 2025 launches (x402, AP2, ACP) with no single coiner
related_to
x402 agent-identity a2a
contrast_with
Unlike e-commerce, where a human clicks checkout, agentic commerce has the AI agent transact on the user's behalf — shifting the hard problem from UX to verifiable authorization (did the agent have permission to spend?).
example
OpenAI and Stripe launched the Agentic Commerce Protocol with ChatGPT Instant Checkout on 29 September 2025, going live with Etsy on launch day.
source
https://openai.com/index/buy-it-in-chatgpt/
status
emerging
why_it_matters
Agentic commerce is the revenue side of the agentic web; a site that wants agents to buy from it must speak one of its authorization-plus-settlement protocols.
sameAs
bridge_entity
protocols/payments/x402
last_verified
2026-06-15
md_twin
/glossary/agentic-commerce.md

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