Agentic commerce protocols

Agent-led checkout needs rails. Three are emerging: OpenAI and Stripe's commerce protocol, Google's payments protocol, and Anthropic's tool protocol. Here is what each does and why early movers care.

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Protocol	Backed by	What it handles
Agentic Commerce Protocol (ACP)	OpenAI + Stripe	Product selection and checkout, programmatically
Agent Payments Protocol (AP2)	Google	Authorizing and securing agent-made payments
Model Context Protocol	Anthropic	Exposing callable tools, including cart and search

These are young and moving fast. You do not have to bet on a single winner to act. The prerequisite for all of them is the same: product data, pricing, availability, and policies that a machine can read and trust.

What to do now

Get the foundation right before chasing any single protocol. Mark up your catalog with Product and Offer schema, keep pricing and availability current, and make your policies machine-readable. That work pays off no matter which rail an agent uses. Then, as an early mover, track ACP and AP2 closely and pilot where it fits. The buyer side of all this is covered in AI shopping agents.

Agentic commerce protocols, answered

What is the Agentic Commerce Protocol (ACP)?

The Agentic Commerce Protocol is an open standard from OpenAI and Stripe that lets AI agents complete purchases programmatically, handling product selection and checkout through a defined interface rather than puppeteering a store's UI. It is one of the first real rails for agent-led buying.

What is Google's AP2?

AP2, the Agent Payments Protocol, is Google's effort focused on authorizing and securing payments made by agents. Where ACP handles the commerce flow, AP2 addresses the question of how an agent is permitted to pay on a person's behalf safely. They are complementary pieces of the same emerging stack.

Do I need to implement these protocols now?

Most brands should start by making their product data and policies machine-readable, which is the prerequisite for any agent transaction. Implementing the protocols directly is an early-mover move worth tracking closely, especially for ecommerce, since the standards are young and being shaped now.

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