Agent Payments Protocol (AP2)

An open protocol from Google that gives an AI agent a cryptographically signed mandate proving a human authorized it to spend, before any payment is made.

term

Agent Payments Protocol (AP2)

category

commerce

short_def

An open protocol from Google that gives an AI agent a cryptographically signed mandate proving a human authorized it to spend, before any payment is made.

long_def

Announced by Google on 16 September 2025 with more than sixty payments and technology partners (including Mastercard, PayPal, American Express, Coinbase and Adyen), AP2 introduces tamper-proof 'mandates' — signed digital contracts that prove a user authorized a specific transaction. It is payment-rail agnostic (cards, bank transfers, stablecoins) and is designed to layer on top of A2A and settlement protocols like x402.

see_also

x402 agentic-commerce a2a

etymology_origin

Announced by Google on 16 September 2025 as the Agent Payments Protocol (AP2), developed with 60+ payments and technology partners; an open, payment-rail-agnostic extension to the Agent2Agent (A2A) ecosystem.

related_to

x402 agentic-commerce a2a agent-identity acp

contrast_with

Unlike x402, which is the settlement layer that actually moves a stablecoin, AP2 is the authorization layer — a cryptographic mandate proving the human consented; AP2 extends x402 rather than replacing it.

example

Google announced AP2 on 16 September 2025 with more than sixty partners including Mastercard, PayPal, American Express and Coinbase.

source

https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/ai-machine-learning/announcing-agents-to-payments-ap2-protocol

status

emerging

why_it_matters

AP2 is the authorization standard that lets a site accept agent-initiated payments with proof the human consented — the trust precondition for agentic checkout at scale.

sameAs

—

bridge_entity

protocols/payments/ap2

last_verified

2026-06-15

md_twin

/glossary/ap2.md

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