Payments

This section covers how an AI agent pays for things on a person’s behalf, often called agentic commerce. Each program has its own page. The YAML header at the top of each page holds a short record: who runs it, what an agent can do, what the person controls, whether there is an official MCP server, and how available it is. Every value is sourced or says “unknown.” The same records are in data/programs.json.

The programs

Program	Type	In one line
Visa Intelligent Commerce	Card network	Approved agent builders pay with tokenized Visa credentials, under purchase instructions the consumer approved.1
Mastercard Agent Pay	Card network	Only registered agents can pay, using Mastercard agentic tokens.23
Agentic Commerce Protocol (ACP)	Commerce protocol	An open standard for buyers, their agents and businesses to complete purchases. OpenAI and Stripe maintain it, and it is in beta.4
Stripe	Payment tokens and MCP	Shared payment tokens give a seller limited use of a customer’s payment method. Stripe also runs an official MCP server.56
PayPal	MCP server and toolkit	An MCP server and an agent toolkit for PayPal business APIs such as orders and invoices.78
x402	Payment protocol	An open standard for paying inside a web request, built on the HTTP 402 “Payment Required” status.910
AP2 (Agent Payments Protocol)	Mandate protocol	An open protocol that carries signed proof of what the user authorized.11
Robinhood Agentic Credit Card	Agent card	A virtual card for your agent, with approval for each purchase or a required monthly limit.12

What can an agent do with each program?

The same records side by side, taken from each page’s YAML header. Each value is sourced on its page; unknown means no source confirms it yet. The same records are in data/programs.json.

Program	Operator	What an agent can do	What you control	Official MCP	Availability	Last verified
Agentic Commerce Protocol (ACP)	OpenAI and Stripe (spec maintainers)	Let a user find and buy from a business inside an AI app, through a checkout API and a delegated-payment spec	unknown	unknown	Beta. OpenAI and Stripe were the first to implement it	2026-11-14
AP2 (Agent Payments Protocol)	Google (reference code on GitHub)	Carry signed proof of what the user authorized: a Checkout Mandate shared with the merchant and a Payment Mandate shared with the credential provider, the card networks and the payment processor	Open mandates hold the user’s limits, such as budget and allowed payment methods, before a cart is final. Closed mandates authorize one finalized checkout and amount	unknown	Open protocol, available as an extension for A2A and Universal Commerce Protocol. Samples in Python, Go and Android	2026-11-14
Mastercard Agent Pay	Mastercard	Pay with agentic tokens once registered and verified, including through a merchant’s normal card checkout form	Mastercard says each transaction is checked against authenticated user intent and explicit consent before the action	unknown	unknown	2026-11-14
PayPal	PayPal	Use PayPal APIs for orders, invoices, subscriptions, shipment tracking, transaction details and disputes	Access uses the PayPal account’s own credentials: an access token for the local server, or client ID and secret for the hosted one. A sandbox is available for testing	Yes	Local server (Node.js 18 or later) or hosted server. Sandbox address https://mcp.sandbox.paypal.com	2026-11-14
Robinhood Agentic Credit Card	Robinhood (Robinhood Credit, Inc.)	Fetch the agentic virtual card’s number to finish purchases, and read that card’s spending history and settings. The MCP does not browse or shop for you	Approve each purchase in the Robinhood Banking app, or set a monthly limit, which is required if you do not approve each purchase. The agent sees only the cards you authorize	Yes	A virtual card in the Robinhood Gold Card. Card setup and agent sign-in work on desktop only. Announced 2026-05-27	2026-11-14
Stripe	Stripe	Grant a seller a shared payment token for a purchase. Separately, call the Stripe API and search Stripe’s docs through the Stripe MCP server	Each token has usage and expiry limits, such as currency, maximum amount and an expiry window. MCP access is granted on Stripe’s OAuth consent page and can be revoked	Yes	Shared payment tokens are in public preview in the US, Canada and select European countries	2026-11-14
Visa Intelligent Commerce	Visa	Buy things for a consumer with tokenized Visa credentials, under purchase instructions the consumer approved	Consumer-approved purchase instructions, Visa Payment Passkeys with device binding, and network-level controls	Yes	Production needs Visa onboarding and approval at each stage: sandbox, certification, production. Intelligent Commerce Connect was in pilot with select partners as of 2026-04-08	2026-11-14
x402	x402 Foundation	Pay for a web resource as part of the request: the server replies 402 Payment Required with its terms, and the client retries with a payment attached	unknown	unknown	Open standard. Specification version 2 is published	2026-11-14

How the controls work

The sources describe three kinds of control. Most programs use more than one.

• The network vets the agent. Visa requires approved participants and agent registration before production use.¹ Mastercard registers and verifies agents before they can transact.³
• The credential is limited. Stripe’s shared payment tokens carry usage and expiry limits.⁵ Visa and Mastercard use tokenized credentials instead of the raw card number.¹³ See payment token.
• The person approves. Robinhood lets you approve each purchase in its app. If you turn that off, a monthly limit is required.¹² AP2 records the user’s authorization as signed mandates.¹¹

What is still unknown

• Fees for agent payments. None of the cited sources give them.
• Which consumer AI apps can use each card-network program today.
• Production MCP addresses for Visa and Mastercard.

See gaps for the full list.

Related pages

• Agent payments: the one-table rail overview.
• Agent identity: how merchants tell which agent is calling, including Visa’s Trusted Agent Protocol and Web Bot Auth.
• Mandates and data access: proof of authorization and the US data-rights rule.
• Personal money agents: agents that work with your bank and card data.

Not investment advice.

Sources

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Suggest a correction (opens a GitHub issue)

Footnotes

1. Visa Developer Center. Visa Developer, official, retrieved 2026-11-12. ↩ ↩² ↩³

2. Mastercard Agent Pay: secure, scalable and trusted agentic AI. Mastercard, official, retrieved 2026-11-12. ↩

3. Agentic token framework: Driving trusted AI transactions. Mastercard, official, retrieved 2026-11-12. ↩ ↩² ↩³

4. GitHub - agentic-commerce-protocol/agentic-commerce-protocol: The Agentic Commerce Protocol (ACP) is an interaction model and open standard for connec. ACP (GitHub), official, retrieved 2026-11-12. ↩

5. Shared payment tokens - Stripe Documentation. Stripe Docs, official, retrieved 2026-11-12. ↩ ↩²

6. Model Context Protocol (MCP) - Stripe Documentation. Stripe Docs, official, retrieved 2026-11-12. ↩

7. MCP server quickstart guide - PayPal Developer. PayPal Developer, official, retrieved 2026-11-12. ↩

8. Agent toolkit quickstart guide - PayPal Developer. PayPal Developer, official, retrieved 2026-11-12. ↩

9. GitHub - x402-foundation/x402: A payments protocol for the internet. Built on HTTP. · GitHub. x402 Foundation (GitHub), official, retrieved 2026-11-12. ↩

10. x402 specification v2. x402 Foundation (GitHub), official, retrieved 2026-11-12. ↩

11. AP2 - Agent Payments Protocol Documentation. AP2 Protocol, official, retrieved 2026-11-12. ↩ ↩²

12. Agentic Credit Card - Robinhood. Robinhood, official, retrieved 2026-11-12. ↩ ↩²