Protocols
mandate
In AP2, a mandate is a signed authorization an agent presents to prove it may act for a user. Version 0.2 specifies two kinds: a checkout mandate for the merchant, and a payment mandate for the credential provider, network, and merchant payment processor. Each can be closed, for one checkout, or open, under constraints.
Explanation
The shopping agent prepares the mandate contents. A trusted surface is what the user actually signs. Closed checkout mandates use vct mandate.checkout.1 and include the merchant's checkout JWT plus a hash of it. Closed payment mandates use mandate.payment.1 and bind to the checkout with transaction_id, a hash of that JWT. Open mandates use the .open.1 names and may constrain merchants, line items, payees, instruments, amount, budget, and how often the agent may pay.
After a merchant accepts or rejects a checkout mandate it returns a checkout receipt. A payment receipt follows the payment mandate. Those receipts document the decision. They are not a public chain of settled funds. This index does not ingest mandate payloads, and a mandate alone never adds to Agent GDP.