What is the difference between Visa Trusted Agent Protocol, Mastercard Agent Pay and Google AP2?

Visa’s Trusted Agent Protocol lets merchants recognize verified agents; Mastercard Agent Pay issues Agentic Tokens to registered agents; Google’s AP2 is an open, payment-method-agnostic protocol built on signed mandates. Stripe and OpenAI’s ACP connects merchants to ChatGPT checkout. They overlap and are designed to coexist on the same transaction.

Visa and Mastercard

Visa Intelligent Commerce launched in 2025. Its Trusted Agent Protocol, introduced in October 2025, helps merchants tell malicious bots apart from legitimate AI agents. Mastercard Agent Pay, announced in April 2025, introduced Agentic Tokens, which require agents to be registered and verified, let users define what an agent may buy, and make agent purchases identifiable to consumers, merchants and issuers.

Google AP2 and ACP

Google’s AP2, released in September 2025 with more than 60 organizations, is payment-method agnostic: cards, stablecoins and real-time bank transfers, with an x402 extension for crypto. It defines an Intent Mandate, which captures the user’s request and its limits, and a Cart Mandate, signed when a specific cart is approved. Stripe and OpenAI’s Agentic Commerce Protocol (ACP) powers Instant Checkout in ChatGPT, with a Shared Payment Token scoped to a specific merchant and cart total.

More detail in our #PayDecoding episode on Agentic commerce.