Agentic Commerce Protocol: ACP, AP2 and Visa Explained
AI agents are starting to shop and pay on people's behalf, and a new layer of standards is emerging to let them do it safely. If you sell food, understanding the agentic commerce protocol landscape is quickly becoming part of the job. This guide explains the main contenders in plain English, ACP, Google's AP2, and the card networks' approaches from Visa and Mastercard, why 2025 to 2026 is the inflection point, and what your team should do to make your catalogue agent-ready.
What agentic commerce means and why now
Agentic commerce is when AI agents discover products, make decisions and complete purchases on a shopper's behalf, rather than a person clicking through a website themselves. The reason 2025 to 2026 is the inflection point is simple: the rails finally exist. A run of new standards and payment protocols launched in 2025 to let agents transact securely, and demand followed fast.
The momentum is already measurable. AI agent traffic rose around 805% year on year on Black Friday 2025, and AI agents influenced roughly $67 billion of global Cyber Week 2025 sales, about 20% of orders. For food retailers and brands, that signals a real shift in where discovery and checkout will increasingly happen, away from your own site and towards the assistants your customers already use.
The Agentic Commerce Protocol (ACP)
The Agentic Commerce Protocol (ACP) is an open standard co-developed by OpenAI and Stripe, designed to let people buy directly inside ChatGPT. It went live in ChatGPT in September 2025, launching its Instant Checkout experience with Etsy first, with more than 1 million Shopify merchants in the pipeline.
Crucially for retailers, the merchant remains the merchant of record, so you keep the customer relationship and fulfilment. OpenAI charges a 4% transaction fee on these purchases. The ecosystem is widening too: on 28 October 2025, OpenAI and PayPal announced a partnership to help power Instant Checkout and agentic commerce in ChatGPT. ACP is one of the clearest signals yet that conversational surfaces are becoming genuine shopping surfaces.
Google's Agent Payments Protocol (AP2)
Google's Agent Payments Protocol (AP2) is an open protocol announced on 16 September 2025 with more than 60 partners, including Mastercard, American Express, PayPal, Adyen, Worldpay, Coinbase, Revolut and Salesforce. It is built to give AI agents a trusted, standardised way to pay.
AP2 extends Google's Agent2Agent (A2A) protocol and the Model Context Protocol (MCP), and it is deliberately payment-agnostic, supporting cards, stablecoins and bank transfers. To keep transactions accountable, it uses cryptographically signed Mandates alongside Verifiable Credentials, creating a tamper-evident record of what the shopper actually authorised. For retailers, AP2 points towards an open, multi-payment future rather than a single closed checkout, which lowers the risk of betting on any one ecosystem.
Visa Intelligent Commerce and Mastercard Agent Pay
The card networks are moving too, which matters because they already sit at the centre of payments. Visa launched Intelligent Commerce (and Intelligent Commerce Connect), a single integration that gives merchants access to agentic payments and supports multiple agent protocols, including the Trusted Agent Protocol, Machine Payments Protocol, ACP and the Universal Commerce Protocol.
Mastercard launched Agent Pay in April 2025 and completed its first live agentic payment using a tokenised credential on 29 September 2025. The takeaway for your team is that the networks are positioning as neutral enablers across competing protocols. That makes investing in the rails, and in being readable to agents, a more sensible hedge than tying yourself to a single assistant or standard.
What this means for food retailers and brands
For food retailers and brands, the practical implication is clear: be present where agents shop, and make your data machine-shoppable. Agents can only recommend and buy what they can read, which means structured, shoppable product and recipe data becomes a competitive asset. Recipe inspiration is especially powerful in food, because a single dish can convert into a full basket of ingredients.
This is where Remy fits. Remy is a food-commerce infrastructure layer that turns recipe inspiration into shoppable baskets and is AI-native, accessible via MCP inside ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude. It can be deployed in weeks across four integration models, API, White Label, Off-Site or Decoupled, and Standalone, so you can plug your catalogue into agent surfaces without rebuilding everything from scratch.
Make your catalogue agent-readyThe agentic commerce protocol landscape is moving quickly, but the direction is clear: AI agents will increasingly discover, decide and buy on shoppers' behalf, and the infrastructure to let them do it safely is now in place. For food retailers and brands, the smart move is to get your catalogue and recipes agent-ready before the traffic arrives. Remy exists to make that step straightforward.
Frequently asked questions
What is an agentic commerce protocol?
An agentic commerce protocol is a shared standard that lets AI agents discover products, make decisions and complete payments on a shopper's behalf securely. Examples include OpenAI and Stripe's ACP, Google's AP2, and card-network frameworks like Visa Intelligent Commerce and Mastercard Agent Pay.
What is the difference between ACP and AP2?
ACP, co-developed by OpenAI and Stripe, enables buying inside ChatGPT and went live in September 2025. AP2, announced by Google in September 2025 with 60+ partners, is a payment-agnostic protocol using signed Mandates and Verifiable Credentials. ACP is checkout-focused; AP2 is a broader payments standard.
Do retailers need to support these now?
Not every protocol immediately, but preparation matters. With AI agents influencing around $67 billion of Cyber Week 2025 sales, retailers should start by making product and recipe data structured and machine-shoppable, then plug into agent surfaces as the standards mature.
How do AI agents pay securely?
Through protocols designed for accountability. Google's AP2, for example, uses cryptographically signed Mandates and Verifiable Credentials to record what a shopper authorised. Card networks add tokenised credentials, as in Mastercard's first live agentic payment in September 2025.
How does a food retailer get its products into AI shopping?
By making catalogue and recipe data machine-readable and connecting it to agent surfaces. Remy does this for food, turning recipe inspiration into shoppable baskets via MCP inside ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude, deployable in weeks across four integration models.
Sources
- Buy it in ChatGPT, OpenAI (2025)
- Stripe and OpenAI Instant Checkout, Stripe (2025)
- OpenAI and PayPal team up on Instant Checkout, PayPal (2025-10-28)
- Announcing the Agent Payments Protocol (AP2), Google Cloud (2025-09-16)
- Visa Intelligent Commerce, Visa (2025)
- Visa and Mastercard launch agentic AI payments tools, DigitalCommerce360 (2025-10-16)
- Remy solutions, Remy (2026)