Google has donated its Agent Payments Protocol to the FIDO Alliance and released an updated version, including autonomous payment capabilities.
The move is intended to ensure AP2 remains platform-agnostic and open to broader industry participation. Through the process of placing the protocol under the FIDO Alliance's stewardship, Google aims to accelerate adoption across the payments ecosystem and support interoperability between different platforms and providers.
Protocol update and autonomous transaction support
Alongside the transfer, Google has published AP2 v0.2 on GitHub, introducing new capabilities for autonomous transactions. A key addition is support for 'Human Not Present' payments, which enables AI agents to execute purchases independently, based on instructions pre-authorised by the user. The update is designed to address scenarios in which speed or timing is critical, such as purchasing limited-availability items as soon as they become available, without requiring real-time user interaction.
In addition, the release reflects the broader challenge of enabling AI agents to transact reliably and securely across commerce environments, particularly as autonomous systems take on a more active role in consumer and business workflows.
Verifiable Intent standard co-developed with Mastercard
As part of the same initiative, Google and Mastercard have co-developed a complementary standard called Verifiable Intent, which is also being donated to the FIDO Alliance. Designed to be compatible with AP2, Verifiable Intent creates a tamper-proof log of user-authorised agent actions. The standard is intended to establish accountability within agentic transactions, providing an auditable record of what an agent was instructed to do and when.
The involvement of Mastercard indicates that the effort is drawing participation from established payment network operators, alongside technology providers. Placing both AP2 and Verifiable Intent under FIDO Alliance governance positions the standards within an established framework already recognised for its work on passkeys and authentication protocols.
In addition, the development of open standards for agentic commerce is still at an early stage. AP2 v0.2 carries a pre-release version number, and the transition to FIDO Alliance oversight suggests that future iterations will be shaped through a multi-stakeholder process rather than a single vendor's roadmap.
For the payments industry, the practical implications centre on how agents can be credentialled and authorised to act on behalf of users across different platforms and merchant environments, a question that existing payment infrastructure was not designed to answer.
