Google has joined hands with Coinbase to launch the AP2 protocol, and now agents can make autonomous payments.

Google and the well - known cryptocurrency trading platform Coinbase have jointly launched a new protocol called AP2 (Agentic Payments Protocol).

In simple terms, this is an open standard aimed at enabling AI agents to make payments securely on their own.

This may sound a bit abstract, but it addresses an increasingly real problem:

When AI becomes smart enough to handle various tasks for us, how can we trust it to "spend money"?

A new question: How can AI "spend money"?

Today's AI is no longer just for chatting and writing articles.

AI agents are designed to perform more complex tasks on our behalf, such as automatically booking flights and hotels, or monitoring product prices and automatically placing orders when there are discounts.

The final step of these tasks often involves payment.

This brings up some new issues that traditional payment systems haven't considered. Google mentioned three core challenges in its official blog:

Authorization: How can merchants be sure that the transaction is truly authorized by you for the AI, rather than the AI acting on its own?

Authenticity: Does the order submitted by the AI accurately reflect your true intention? What if the AI misinterprets your instructions and buys the wrong thing?

Accountability: If something goes wrong, such as fraud or an incorrect transaction, who should be responsible? Is it you, the AI developer, or the merchant?

The three core challenges faced by AI payments: authorization, authenticity of intention, and accountability.

Without a unified standard, if each company develops its own system, the entire market will become very chaotic and insecure.

The emergence of the AP2 protocol is to provide a unified and open solution to this problem.

According to Google, they have joined forces with more than 60 payment and technology companies, including Mastercard, PayPal, American Express, etc., to promote this protocol.

The AP2 protocol: A "payment instruction manual" for AI

So, how does the AP2 protocol solve the trust issues mentioned above? Its core design concept is not to change the existing payment channels, but to add a verifiable "authorization" step before payment.

The core is the "Mandate". The AP2 protocol introduces the concept of a "Mandate".

You can think of it as a digitally signed and encrypted contract.

This contract clearly records the instructions you give to the AI, such as "what to buy", "the maximum price", "under what conditions to buy", etc.

This "Mandate" is tamper - proof and can be verified by all parties involved in the transaction (such as merchants and banks). It is like a clear chain of evidence that firmly binds the user's intention, the AI's actions, and the final payment together, solving the problems of who authorizes and who is responsible.

In this way, the traditional "click - to - buy" model is upgraded to a more rigorous "contract dialogue" model.

Every step is traceable, greatly enhancing the security and traceability of transactions.

The core of the AP2 protocol: "Intent Mandate" for delegating tasks and "Cart Mandate" for real - time confirmation.

Two main usage scenarios

Based on whether the user is present, the AP2 protocol has designed two different processing flows:

1. User present (real - time purchase): This scenario is very common. For example, you ask the AI to find a specific style of clothing. The AI finds it and generates a shopping cart with the products and prices.

At this time, you need to personally confirm and "sign" to approve this shopping cart, generating a "Cart Mandate". Then the AI can use this mandate to complete the payment. You are present to supervise the entire process.

2. User absent (delegated purchase): This scenario better reflects the autonomy of AI agents. For example, you tell the AI: "If the price of these shoes drops below 500 yuan, buy them for me." When giving this instruction, you need to sign an "Intent Mandate" that specifies the detailed execution conditions.

After that, the AI will monitor the price on its own. Once the conditions are met, it will automatically generate a shopping cart instruction and complete the purchase based on your pre - authorization, without requiring your further intervention.

|Coinbase's role: Connecting AI and cryptocurrency payments

In this cooperation, Coinbase plays a crucial role. It is mainly responsible for integrating cryptocurrencies, especially stablecoins, into the AP2 protocol. This gives AI agents their own "wallets".

Why are cryptocurrencies needed? A very real problem is that AI agents themselves cannot open accounts in traditional banks.

It is just a program without legal person status.

Blockchain - based cryptocurrencies, especially stablecoins like USDC that are pegged to the US dollar, provide a good solution to this problem.

AI agents can have their own cryptocurrency wallet addresses, through which they can receive, store, and send funds.

This makes payments between AIs (such as a task agent paying a few cents in service fees to a data query agent) very convenient and efficient, especially suitable for small - value, high - frequency micro - payment scenarios.

Coinbase emphasizes that this method is as fast as code execution, which is difficult to match by traditional payment channels.

To achieve this, Coinbase and Google have jointly launched a payment rail called x402 as an extension of the AP2 protocol, specifically designed to handle stablecoin payments.

A powerful ecosystem: More than just a partnership between two companies

The launch of the AP2 protocol is not just a solo effort by Google and Coinbase, but the result of the joint efforts of a large ecosystem.

Google announced that more than 60 leading companies from the payment, technology, finance, and blockchain fields have joined the program to jointly build and promote this open standard.

This cooperation alliance has a strong lineup, including:

Traditional payment giants: Mastercard, American Express, PayPal, JCB, UnionPay International

Payment service providers: Adyen, Worldpay, Forter

Technology and enterprise service platforms: Salesforce, ServiceNow, Intuit

Blockchain and Web3 companies: Ethereum Foundation, MetaMask, Mysten Labs (Sui)

The AP2 protocol has received support from many industry leaders in the payment, finance, and technology fields.

This extensive cooperation ensures that the AP2 protocol can be compatible with various payment methods, from credit cards to stablecoins, and can be promoted globally, avoiding the fragmentation of technical standards and laying the foundation for the interoperability of future intelligent commerce.

What does this mean for the future?

The launch of the AP2 protocol is still in its early stages. For example, the types of supported products are mainly physical goods and regular services. Areas that require complex qualification reviews, such as healthcare and education, have not been connected yet.

Moreover, regulatory requirements vary in different regions. The EU has stated that it will classify AP2 as a high - risk AI category, requiring all transaction records to be stored for at least 10 years and having a real - time regulatory interface.

But it paves the way for the arrival of the "Agent Economy".

Its impact is multi - faceted.

For ordinary users, future shopping and life services will become more intelligent. You can safely entrust more complex tasks to AI, such as asking the AI to plan and book a family trip within a budget of 10,000 yuan. The AI will negotiate and make payments with different airlines and hotels on its own.

For merchants and developers, this is a brand - new business model. Developers can create AI agents that provide paid services, such as a professional AI for reviewing legal documents that charges a small fee for each review. AIs can settle accounts directly with each other, forming a machine - driven micro - service market.

Anyway, now AI agents can finally handle the entire process of "product selection - payment" on their own. Maybe in the future, we can really achieve the goal of "just tell the agent what you want, and it will handle the rest".

This article is from the WeChat official account "Mita's Home". Author: Zhiyuan. Republished by 36Kr with permission.