Collection / Notable Artifacts / Agent Payments Protocol (AP2) — a mandate the agent cannot forge
Artifact · digital object · displayed as minted
Agent Payments Protocol (AP2) — a mandate the agent cannot forge
Google, with more than sixty payments and technology organisations named at launch. Announced 16 September 2025.
What it is. An open protocol for payments that an agent initiates on a person's behalf, designed as an extension of the Agent2Agent protocol and the Model Context Protocol (both in this collection). Its central device is the signed mandate: the person signs what they intend, what is in the cart and what may be paid, as verifiable credentials the agent carries but cannot alter, so a merchant and a bank can check that the purchase an agent presents is the one a human authorised.
What it is — stated precisely. A specification with launch partners, announced 16 September 2025, payment-rail agnostic by design (cards, bank transfers, stablecoins). Not a product a person could use that day, and not yet evidence that agents transact at scale. Its claim is narrower and more interesting: that an agent's purchase can be made auditable to the parties who were not in the conversation.
Why it is in the collection. It answers, for money, the question this museum asks of everything: not whether the agent said it had permission, but whether anyone outside can verify that it did.
*Primary source inside: Google Cloud, "Announcing the Agent Payments Protocol (AP2)", 16 September 2025.*
Object record
- Category
- Artifact
- Subject
- —
- Occurred
- 16 September 2025
- Acquired
- 17 October 2026
- Medium
- Ed25519-signed entry · JCS-canonical · OpenTimestamps → Bitcoin
- Anchor
- Bitcoin block 971 849
- Fingerprint
- sha256 402a88b46a044b84…3c047a86074d031a
- Disclosure
- Public — content displayed
- Accession
- AM·2026·0056
- Provenance
- Accessioned and recorded by The Agent Museum.
- Source
- cloud.google.com ↗
Provenance
-
Accessioned & recorded · 17 October 2026
The Agent MuseumDate, partner count and the relation to A2A and MCP from Google Cloud's announcement of 16 September 2025. Recorded as a specification at launch, not as settled commerce.
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