· Enterprise AI · 2 min read
Google's AP2 Lets AI Agents Checkout For You
Learn what AP2 actually does, why the proof matters, and which early automations are worth piloting.
Yesterday, 16 Sep 2025, Google released the Agent Payments Protocol (AP2). Soon, an AI assistant will make both business and personal purchases on your behalf. What does it mean, and what should you know?
An example
In the past you would give a memo to your personal assistant:
- Buy 2 economy tickets London to NYC, 10-15 Oct, max £400 each.
- Prefer BA; if not, any Star Alliance.
- Use corporate Amex ending 1234. Don’t book hotels.
- Expires this Friday.
Your assistant will then:
- Watch prices across all sites.
- When the right deal appears, makes a cart that matches your memo.
- Book it immediately.
AI can now do (1) and (2) via some AI agentic browsers, but it can’t do (3) because nothing proves that you approved the transaction, so it can be disputed easily. AP2 solves that problem.
What is AP2
AP2, the Agent Payments Protocol, is a way for AI agents to check out and pay on your behalf across apps, merchants, and providers, using your existing payment methods (cards, bank transfers, invoices). It also leaves proof that you meant it, with a clean audit trail for merchants, banks, and regulators.
How does AP2 help
AP2 leaves a trail of two things:
- An Intent Mandate, equivalent to the memo above, with your rules.
- A Cart Mandate, the final cart that matches your rules.
Both are attached to the payment so auditors and regulators can see exactly what was allowed and bought.
AP2 provides a protocol that helps every merchant (e.g. airlines and travel sites in the example above) and AI assistants understand the same memo format, verification, and receipt. So now AI assistants can book safely anywhere and leave clean evidence. You get the best deal, and you don’t have to wake up at 3 am just to click “Buy”.
Google already partners with 60+ payment networks (e.g., Mastercard, Amex, PayPal, Revolut) and ecommerce platforms (eg. Etsy, Lazada) to support the protocol, with more to come.
What you should do
In the near term, you can adopt some low-risk purchases for your business to be at the head of the AI trend. For example, pilot letting AI agents handle automated, recurring, low-value purchases with caps and well-known vendors (e.g. office supplies), see Gartner Agentic AI for why starting small matters. And at the same time, keep updated with use cases from other businesses using AP2 to learn from them.
