Wallets and identity
agentic commerce
Agentic commerce is commerce in which a software agent discovers a service, checks out, or pays, within limits set by a person or an organization. x402 and MPP cover paid APIs. AP2 covers authorization to buy. ACP covers merchant checkout inside an agent. The phrase does not imply that every payer in Agent GDP is autonomous.
Explanation
The protocols split the work. Discovery can be the Bazaar or a merchant product feed. Authorization can be an AP2 mandate or a signed payment payload. Settlement can be a stablecoin transfer, a Tempo channel, a card capture, or a Lightning invoice. A single purchase can use more than one of these, which is why the index refuses to add authorization protocols on top of settlement protocols.
Nothing here assumes agents replace human checkout. ACP's own guide says the merchant stays merchant of record and uses its existing processor. AP2's mandates exist so a user can constrain an agent. The measurable public piece, today, is the settlement slice documented in the methodology.
Live data
Related terms
Sources
- Agentic Payment Protocol specification, v0.2 — AP2
- Agentic commerce key concepts — OpenAI
- x402 Protocol Specification, version 2 — Coinbase x402
- Machine Payments Protocol — Stripe
- Agent GDP methodology — Agent GDP