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ARTICLE · 07 OCTOBER 2025

From E-Commerce To A-Commerce: The Dawn Of Agentic AI Payments

K&L Gates
K&L Gates
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K&L Gates

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Google's recent announcement of the Agent Payments Protocol (AP2) raises a range of fascinating legal questions. The concept behind AP2 is to have a payment system...

United StatesTechnology
Judith E. Rinearson
Judith E. Rinearson
Linda C. Odom
Linda C. Odom
Joshua Durham
Joshua Durham

Google's recent announcement of the Agent Payments Protocol (AP2) raises a range of fascinating legal questions. The concept behind AP2 is to have a payment system that allows consumers to instruct AI empowered agents to search for and make purchases on that consumer's behalf, using "intent mandates" and "cart mandates" that can provide "a non-repudiable audit trail" to establish "authorization and authenticity, providing a clear foundation for accountability."

Google is not doing this on its own. A2P is open source and Google has partnered with over 25 payments related entities (such as American Express, PayPal, Coinbase, Adyen, MasterCard and WorldPay). This opens the door not only to Agent payments but also Agent-to-Agent or A2A transactions where both the purchaser and seller operate through what is referred to as "agentic AI."

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