The Agent Payments Protocol, or AP2, is a new set of rules for how AI agents can move money around safely. Google didn’t do this alone. They worked with more than 60 other companies—big names like Mastercard, American Express, PayPal, Coinbase, Salesforce, and ServiceNow. AP2 builds on earlier ideas (like Agent2Agent and Model Context Protocol) and lets agents pay with credit cards, bank transfers, or even crypto.
So how does it actually work? The protocol relies on something called a 'mandate.' Think of it as a digital permission slip, signed by you, that tells the agent what it can and can’t do with your money. If you’re buying something right now, you sign once to say what you want, and again to approve the final items and prices. If you want an agent to handle things for you later, you set the rules up front—how much it can spend, when, and under what conditions. The agent follows those rules and keeps a record of everything, so you can always see what happened and why.
AP2 isn’t just for credit cards. It also works with bank transfers and crypto, thanks to a special extension built with help from Coinbase, the Ethereum Foundation, and MetaMask. If you want to dig into the details, Google has put all the technical documents and example code on GitHub for anyone to see.
Why does this matter? For the first time, there’s a common set of rules for how AI agents can handle payments. Instead of everyone building their own secret system, the big players are working together. This could make it much easier and safer to let agents buy things for us, whether it’s shopping online, handling business orders, or managing subscriptions. But here’s the real question: will everyone actually use it, or will it just sit there as a nice idea that never really takes off?
Read Google's announcement and access the technical specification
