Google's AI Agent Payments Protocol (AP2)
cloud.google.comGoogle launches AP2: an open payments protocol for AI agents
Google just announced Agent Payments Protocol (AP2): standard meant to let AI agents securely transact across cards, bank transfers & even stablecoins. It uses cryptographically-signed “mandates” to prove intent & create an auditable trail from request → cart → payment.
Apparently 60+ partners on board (Amex, PayPal, Mastercard, Coinbase, etc.).
Google frames this as the foundation of “agentic commerce.”
Is it possible that w/i 6 months an agent-to-agent transaction for a large sum will go wrong, exposing the accountability gaps AP2 is meant to solve?
Is AP2 the missing trust layer for autonomous commerce, or just the start of a messy collision btw agents, payments standards & liability?
I can see this making personal budgeting more challenging, if you have many purchase mandates in-flight. Creating a budgeting system across manual and agentic systems is an open opportunity.
Worse, what about when you have a mandate that can be filled multiple times when you only need it once?
Why would it be an issue to have at-most-one semantics on this?
At most once payments have to be enforced via synchronization which makes the system much more complicated