Agent Payments Protocol (AP2)
Define an open protocol for agent-led payments built on signed mandates and verifiable digital credentials that bound spending and leave a cryptographic audit trail.
Description
The Agent Payments Protocol (AP2) is an open specification from Google, developed with the FIPA Alliance working groups, for payments initiated by AI agents. The user signs mandates that capture spending constraints up front so an agent can execute payments within those bounds. Mandates are expressed as verifiable digital credentials, which are tamper-evident, cryptographically signed objects. Each transaction produces a non-repudiable cryptographic audit trail to support dispute resolution.
Solution
The user signs a mandate that captures payment constraints such as budget and allowed instruments, the agent executes a transaction within those constraints, and the protocol records each step as a tamper-evident, cryptographically signed verifiable digital credential that forms a non-repudiable audit trail.
Primary use cases
- authorizing agent-led payments within user-set spending bounds
- issuing signed mandates as verifiable digital credentials
- producing a non-repudiable audit trail for agent transactions
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