Agentic Commerce Protocol (ACP)
An open specification for checkout between buyers, their AI agents and sellers, with delegated payment tokens.
The Agentic Commerce Protocol is an open specification, released under the Apache License, for programmatic purchases between buyers, their AI agents and sellers. It consists of an Agentic Checkout specification, which defines how agents create and complete checkout sessions with sellers, and a Delegate Payment specification, which defines how agents obtain payment tokens with allowance constraints from payment providers. Sellers remain the merchant of record and keep their existing commerce and payment systems.
Agent Minute explains this term on 2 January 2027.
Related terms
Agentic checkoutA checkout an agent completes through a structured API with the seller, instead of operating the seller's website.Checkout sessionIn ACP, the stateful object an agent and seller update together, from items and options to completion.Delegated paymentGiving an agent a payment token limited by an allowance, such as amount, currency, merchant and expiry.Merchant of recordThe business legally selling to the customer and responsible for the payment, refunds, taxes and disputes.