Google and Mastercard are backing a Fido Alliance initiative to develop interoperable standards for agentic commerce.
Editorial
This content has been selected, created and edited by the Finextra editorial team based upon its relevance and interest to our community.
With AI agent shopping widely seen as the next frontier of commerce, stakeholders have been rushing to develop the infrastructure to smooth the process.
Now Google – which is one of several firms, including Visa and Stripe, to develop an open protocol designed to serve as the foundation needed to enable AI agents to transact payments on behalf of users and merchants – is donating that protocol to the Fido Alliance.
The Fido Alliance was set up by industry players in 2012 in order to usher in the replacement of password-based online authentication with an industry-supported open protocol tied to the actual device used to access services.
Now, the alliance is setting its sights on a different challenge: ensuring interactions performed by AI agents on behalf of users are simple and trusted. It is forming an Agentic Authentication Technical Working Group, bidding to develop specifications for agent-initiated commerce.
This will draw on Google’s donated Agent Payments Protocol (AP2) and Mastercard’s Verifiable Intent, which both aim to define trust mechanism for how agents authenticate, act and transact on behalf of users.
Fido says its efforts will focus on three core areas: verifiable user instructions, agent authentication, and trusted delegation for commerce.
“AI agents are quickly becoming part of how people get things done online – from making purchases to managing everyday tasks,” says Andrew Shikiar, CEO, Fido Alliance. “To scale this safely, people need to trust that these actions are secure, authorized and truly reflect their intent.”
Fido has brought in members from CVS Health, Google and OpenAI to chair the working group, with vice-chairs from Amazon, Google and Okta.
In parallel, the alliance is developing specifications for agent-initiated commerce within its Payments Technical Working Group, chaired by members from Mastercard and Visa. The technical contributions from Google and Mastercard are providing an initial foundation for these specifications.
“Contributing Agent Payments Protocol to a trusted industry association like the Fido Alliance ensures it stays open, platform-agnostic, and community-led as the emerging standard to accelerate the adoption of secure agentic payments,” says Stavan Parikh, VP/GM, payments, Google.
