How AI agents pay for things, the protocols that make it work, the words people use, and the companies building it. Updated every month.
The open standards and network programs agents use to check out and pay, with the date each launched.
A server answers an unpaid request with HTTP 402 Payment Required, the client pays in stablecoins and retries, and the data comes back. No account or API key is needed.
Records what the user approved as signed mandates: an Intent Mandate with the rules (price limit, timing) and a Cart Mandate locking the exact items and price.
An open standard (Apache 2.0) for an agent to run checkout with a merchant. Payment passes as a token from the merchant's payment processor (Stripe's Shared Payment Token was the first), so the agent never sees the card number. ChatGPT was the first platform to use it.
A common format for agents, platforms and merchants covering discovery, checkout and orders. Shopping came first; a lodging spec is in draft and food is next.
An agent opens a session, authorises once, and then pays within set limits. Many small payments settle together as one.
APIs that give an agent a Visa credential with controls and authentication built in, so AI platforms can let agents buy with a cardholder's card. Visa says it's still being deployed.
Lets a merchant check with a cryptographic signature that a visiting bot is an approved shopping agent, using HTTP Message Signatures and Web Bot Auth.
Issues Agentic Tokens tied to a registered agent, so only registered agents can pay and each payment traces back to one.
Stripe's docs cover both sides: agents that pay and businesses that sell to agents, with Shared Payment Tokens and machine payments. Link offers agents a one-time card number per purchase (US waitlist).
Builders and operators who post about agent payments in public.
71 agentic commerce companies in one table: agent wallets, cards, pay-per-call, checkout and the networks behind them, with each one's status.
Open the directoryRunning an agent platform that holds USDC? Upshift runs stablecoin vaults where a company wallet or card prefund that waits a day or more can earn yield, with exit terms set per vault.
Talk to usSources are linked on each entry. Last updated 8 Nov 2026.
Upshift builds custom, non-custodial vaults for wallets, exchanges, neobanks and asset managers. Tell us what you are building and the team will follow up.