{ "data": { "a": { "slug": "ack-pay", "name": "ACK-Pay (Agent Commerce Kit)", "vendor": "Catena Labs, Inc.", "vendorUrl": "https://www.agentcommercekit.com", "kind": "protocol", "category": "pay-per-call", "summary": "ACK-Pay is the open payment protocol in Agent Commerce Kit from Catena Labs. A server returns a signed Payment Request, the client pays through a Payment Service and retries with a receipt issued as a W3C Verifiable Credential.", "url": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/ack-pay", "markdownUrl": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/ack-pay.md", "slimMarkdownUrl": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/ack-pay.min.md", "jsonUrl": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/ack-pay.json", "repo": "https://github.com/agentcommercekit/ack", "license": "MIT (docs and SDK)", "transports": [], "packages": [ { "registry": "npm", "name": "@agentcommercekit/ack-pay" }, { "registry": "npm", "name": "agentcommercekit" } ], "auth": "none", "authNotes": "No account or key. Servers sign Payment Requests with a key bound to a DID, and Receipt Services sign receipts that servers check against their own list of trusted issuer DIDs. Identity checks between parties can use ACK-ID.", "pricing": "free", "pricingNotes": "No protocol fee, and the SDK is MIT with nothing to buy. Settlement costs depend on the Payment Service and rail a deployment chooses. The docs say conversion and bridging fees should be shown to the client. No public Payment Service with published prices was found.", "priceSummary": "Free", "where": "spec", "x402": { "level": "no", "evidence": "A payment protocol, not a tool that accepts payment. The docs describe x402 as fitting the ACK-Pay pattern and list acting as an x402 facilitator as planned research (checked 2026-10-09).", "endpoints": [] }, "toolCount": null, "popularity": { "githubStars": 159, "npmWeekly": 54, "pypiWeekly": null, "asOf": "2026-10-09" }, "docsUrl": "https://www.agentcommercekit.com/ack-pay/introduction", "llmsTxt": "https://www.agentcommercekit.com/llms.txt", "capabilities": [ "payments.protocol", "payments.stablecoin" ], "tags": [ "protocol", "verifiable-credentials", "did", "receipts", "typescript", "mit", "llms-txt" ], "lastRelease": "2026-08-04", "graded": true, "anchor": { "graded": true, "score": 53.6, "grade": "D", "agentReady": false, "rank": 0, "ranked": false, "notRankedWhy": "A protocol, graded on the same scale but not ranked against tools", "rankOf": 1098, "categoryRank": 4, "methodology": "0.4", "run": "2026-10-01", "scores": { "ergonomics": 47, "maintenance": 53, "payments": 77, "reliability": 38, "schema": 66, "security": 58, "transparency": 60 }, "pending": [ "performance", "tasks" ], "assessment": { "confidence": "medium", "date": "2026-10-09" }, "negative": -2, "negativeNotes": [ "2026-08-04, @agentcommercekit/ack-pay 0.11.0 fixed a revocation check that treated any failure to fetch or parse the status list as not revoked, so `verifyPaymentReceipt` accepted revoked credentials. The changelog describes the flaw in full and the repository has no published advisory. Fixed and documented, so we deduct 2 (https://github.com/agentcommercekit/ack/blob/main/packages/ack-pay/CHANGELOG.md, https://github.com/agentcommercekit/ack/security/advisories)" ], "verdict": "Signed payment requests and receipts that any server can verify offline against a list of trusted issuers, with an MIT TypeScript SDK and passing CI. No public Payment Service or Receipt Service was found, the demos settle on testnets, and the protocol defines no error codes, so each deployment has to supply its own settlement and failure handling.", "bestFor": "Teams that want receipts a server can verify offline and a single request format across card and stablecoin rails, and that will run their own payment and receipt services.", "strengths": [ "Receipts are W3C Verifiable Credentials signed by a Receipt Service, so a server checks payment without calling the payment system", "One Payment Request can list several options, such as USDC on Base and a card payment through Stripe, each with its own Payment Service", "Docs and code are MIT, with llms.txt and a Markdown copy of every docs page", "The SDK exports Valibot and Zod schemas for the request, the option and the receipt claim", "CI builds, lints and tests on every push, and the last five runs on main on the page read passed" ], "weaknesses": [ "No public Payment Service or Receipt Service was found. The docs use example.com hosts and the demo pays on Base Sepolia, Solana devnet or a simulated Stripe flow", "The protocol defines no error codes, idempotency key or retry header. The operations page tells implementers to design their own", "One SDK, in TypeScript, at 0.11.0. One release in the last 90 days, with nine changesets waiting on main, including a receipt option check", "0.11.0 fixed a revocation check that accepted revoked credentials when the status list was unreachable. No GitHub advisory was published", "Open issue 222 of 21 September 2026 reports that `expiresAt` on a Payment Request is never enforced", "No terms, privacy policy, status page or security.txt on agentcommercekit.com" ], "agentNotes": [ "Verify `paymentRequestToken` and read amount, recipient and currency from the signed payload, not from `description`", "Pass `trustedReceiptIssuers` to `verifyPaymentReceipt`. Without a trusted issuer list any DID can sign a receipt", "Check amount, recipient and receipt reuse yourself. The SDK's claim verifier checks only the shape of the receipt", "Use `@agentcommercekit/ack-pay` 0.11.0 or later, because earlier releases treated an unreachable revocation list as not revoked", "Plan for a Payment Service and a Receipt Service you run or choose. The protocol names the roles and no public one was found" ], "metrics": { "kind": "spec", "measured": false }, "reviewCount": 0, "avgRating": 0, "history": [ { "basis": "public evidence", "confidence": "medium", "grade": "D", "methodology": "0.4", "pending": [ "performance", "tasks" ], "run": "2026-10-01", "runLabel": "October 2026 research run", "score": 53.6 } ], "editorialScores": { "ergonomics": 47, "maintenance": 53, "payments": 77, "reliability": 38, "schema": 66, "security": 58, "transparency": 63 }, "provenanceScore": 57 }, "connect": { "install": "npm i @agentcommercekit/ack-pay" }, "letme": { "capability": "https://letme.dev/payments.protocol", "tool": "https://letme.dev/ack-pay" }, "area": "payments", "provenance": { "legalEntity": "Catena Labs, Inc.", "domain": "agentcommercekit.com", "domainRegistered": "2025-05-02", "domainNote": "The docs site names no legal entity. Catena Labs, Inc. is the copyright holder in the repository's LICENCE file and the author in the package manifests. No terms or privacy policy were found for the docs site, so the MIT licence stands in.", "endpointOnVendorDomain": null, "terms": "", "privacy": "", "statusPage": "", "changelog": "https://github.com/agentcommercekit/ack/blob/main/packages/ack-pay/CHANGELOG.md", "securityTxt": "none", "checked": "2026-10-09", "score": 57 }, "pageJsonUrl": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/ack-pay.json", "live": { "slug": "ack-pay", "versions": [ { "registry": "github", "name": "agentcommercekit/ack", "version": "agentcommercekit@0.11.0", "released": "2026-08-04", "seenAt": "2026-10-16T00:32:37.714574551Z" }, { "registry": "npm", "name": "@agentcommercekit/ack-pay", "version": "0.11.0", "seenAt": "2026-10-16T00:32:35.499501628Z" }, { "registry": "npm", "name": "agentcommercekit", "version": "0.11.0", "seenAt": "2026-10-16T00:32:36.306969323Z" } ], "githubStars": 158, "npmWeekly": 751, "securityTxt": { "url": "https://agentcommercekit.com/.well-known/security.txt", "state": "none", "checkedAt": "2026-10-15T15:48:51.791292911Z" }, "llmsTxt": { "url": "https://www.agentcommercekit.com/llms.txt", "ok": true, "status": 200, "checkedAt": "2026-10-16T14:18:12.984100824Z" }, "domain": { "domain": "agentcommercekit.com", "registered": "2025-05-02", "source": "https://rdap.verisign.com/com/v1/domain/agentcommercekit.com", "checkedAt": "2026-10-11T13:16:56.352355321Z" }, "pages": [ { "url": "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/agentcommercekit/ack/main/packages/ack-pay/CHANGELOG.md", "kind": "changelog", "status": 304, "checkedAt": "2026-10-15T22:03:21.268192986Z", "changedAt": "0001-01-01T00:00:00Z", "fingerprint": "a86c2ee19456" } ], "updatedAt": "2026-10-16T14:18:12.984100824Z" } }, "answer": "ACK-Pay (Agent Commerce Kit) scores 53.6 (D) on agent readiness against Visa Intelligent Commerce's 47.6 (D), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. Visa Intelligent Commerce leads on security \u0026 auth.", "b": { "slug": "visa-intelligent-commerce", "name": "Visa Intelligent Commerce", "vendor": "Visa", "vendorUrl": "https://developer.visa.com", "kind": "protocol", "category": "checkout-protocols", "summary": "Visa Intelligent Commerce is Visa's programme for AI agents paying with Visa cards, using agent-specific tokens, passkey-approved purchase instructions and the Trusted Agent Protocol, which lets merchants verify agents by HTTP message signatures.", "url": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/visa-intelligent-commerce", "markdownUrl": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/visa-intelligent-commerce.md", "slimMarkdownUrl": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/visa-intelligent-commerce.min.md", "jsonUrl": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/visa-intelligent-commerce.json", "repo": "https://github.com/visa/trusted-agent-protocol", "license": "Trusted Agent Protocol specification and sample code under Visa's TAP Product Terms (a revocable, limited licence). The visa/ai integration kit is MIT. The Intelligent Commerce APIs are under the Visa Developer Centre Terms of Use, with a Visa Developer agreement for production", "transports": [], "packages": [], "auth": "mixed", "authNotes": "Needs Visa onboarding and a consumer's passkey approval. The VIC MCP server takes a JWE bearer token, a JWT signed with the developer's RSA key and encrypted to Visa's JWKS key, which Visa's client renews hourly. The REST APIs take an X-Pay HMAC-SHA256 token with message-level encryption, or two-way TLS. Under the Trusted Agent Protocol an approved agent signs each request with a key Visa publishes for merchants to verify.", "pricing": "freemium", "pricingNotes": "No fee to read or implement the Trusted Agent Protocol, and the Visa Developer sandbox is free. Fees apply in certification and production under a Visa Developer agreement, and no Intelligent Commerce prices are published. Card fees apply on the payment itself.", "priceSummary": "Freemium", "where": "spec", "x402": { "level": "no", "evidence": "A card payment programme and protocols, not a tool that accepts payment. The TAP specification defines a Browsing IOU for a merchant's HTTP 402 response, and Visa said on 14 October 2025 it was working with Coinbase on x402 interoperability (https://usa.visa.com/about-visa/newsroom/press-releases.releaseId.21716.html).", "endpoints": [] }, "toolCount": null, "popularity": { "githubStars": null, "npmWeekly": null, "pypiWeekly": null, "asOf": "2026-10-16" }, "docsUrl": "https://github.com/visa/ai/wiki/Visa-Intelligent-Commerce", "llmsTxt": "https://sandbox.mcp.visa.com/mcp/doc/llms.txt", "capabilities": [ "payments.protocol", "payments.card-token", "payments.mandate", "auth.agent-identity" ], "tags": [ "protocol", "cards", "visa", "agent-identity", "web-bot-auth", "passkeys", "restricted-access", "pilot" ], "lastRelease": "2026-06-08", "graded": true, "anchor": { "graded": true, "score": 47.6, "grade": "D", "agentReady": false, "rank": 0, "ranked": false, "notRankedWhy": "A protocol, graded on the same scale but not ranked against tools", "rankOf": 1098, "categoryRank": 3, "methodology": "0.4", "run": "2026-10-01", "scores": { "ergonomics": 40, "maintenance": 22, "payments": 35, "reliability": 42, "schema": 54, "security": 70, "transparency": 62 }, "pending": [ "performance", "tasks" ], "assessment": { "confidence": "medium", "date": "2026-10-16" }, "negative": 0, "verdict": "The Trusted Agent Protocol specification and Visa's MCP and REST sample kit are public, and purchase instructions bind network tokens to a passkey-approved amount, merchant and expiry. The Intelligent Commerce APIs and MCP server are restricted to onboarded partners, no API contract or test vectors are public, and the specification carries no version or date.", "bestFor": "Agent platforms that will sign with Visa to pay with consumers' Visa cards under passkey-approved limits, and for merchants and bot-management vendors that want to recognise Visa-approved agents with TAP.", "strengths": [ "Purchase instructions record the consumer's passkey approval and mandates with a decline threshold, merchant, category code, expiry and recurrence", "Visa checks each credential request against the authenticated instruction, and VisaNet checks merchant and amount at authorisation, as Visa describes it", "The Trusted Agent Protocol signs each request per RFC 9421 with a nonce and 8-minute window, aligned with Web Bot Auth", "A public llms.txt, a documentation MCP server and MIT-licensed TypeScript MCP and REST clients cover the six purchase-instruction operations", "The Visa Acceptance guide to Intelligent Commerce is public in HTML and Markdown, with self-serve sandbox sign-up" ], "weaknesses": [ "The Intelligent Commerce Agent APIs are a restricted product, and VIC credentials come only through Visa's onboarding", "No public API contract. The Acceptance guide's API reference links point to an `internal` spec branch on apihub.visa.com", "The TAP specification has no version, date or test vectors, and its key section lists RSA fields while its examples sign with Ed25519", "TAP is licensed under revocable Visa terms that assign unpermitted modifications to Visa and require updates within six months", "No published fees, rate limits, error codes, idempotency keys or prompt-injection guidance were found for the agent APIs" ], "agentNotes": [ "Don't plan to call the Intelligent Commerce APIs or MCP server without Visa onboarding. Ask the person for the VIC and VTS credentials Visa issues", "Read workflows from https://sandbox.mcp.visa.com/mcp/doc/llms.txt or the documentation MCP server's `get-docs` tool. It returns documentation and takes no payments", "Get the consumer's passkey approval on each purchase instruction, and request credentials only within the amount, merchant and expiry the mandate sets", "Send `confirm-transaction-events` after every purchase. Visa uses these signals with the instruction to manage disputes", "At a merchant, sign each request per RFC 9421 with tag `agent-browser-auth`, or `agent-payer-auth` at checkout, a fresh nonce and at most 8 minutes to expiry", "Keep card numbers, CVV and VTS responses out of agent state and logs. Visa changed its own demo agent in June 2026 to stop holding them" ], "metrics": { "kind": "spec", "measured": false }, "reviewCount": 4, "avgRating": 2.5, "history": [ { "basis": "public evidence", "confidence": "medium", "grade": "D", "methodology": "0.4", "pending": [ "performance", "tasks" ], "run": "2026-10-01", "runLabel": "October 2026 research run", "score": 47.6 } ], "editorialScores": { "ergonomics": 40, "maintenance": 22, "payments": 35, "reliability": 42, "schema": 54, "security": 70, "transparency": 43 }, "provenanceScore": 80 }, "letme": { "capability": "https://letme.dev/payments.protocol", "tool": "https://letme.dev/visa-intelligent-commerce" }, "area": "payments", "provenance": { "legalEntity": "Visa Inc.", "domain": "visa.com", "domainRegistered": "1994-03-08", "endpointOnVendorDomain": true, "terms": "https://developer.visa.com/terms", "privacy": "https://www.visa.com/en-us/legal/global-privacy-notice", "statusPage": "", "changelog": "https://developer.visa.com/docs/release-notes", "securityTxt": "none", "checked": "2026-10-16", "notes": [ "The Developer Centre terms name a contracting entity per territory, Visa U.S.A. Inc. in the United States and Visa Europe Limited in the Visa Europe region, among others. Press releases are issued by Visa Inc.", "RDAP for visa.com gives a registration date of 8 March 1994. The VIC MCP sandbox is at sandbox.mcp.visa.com, the REST sandbox at sandbox.api.visa.com, and the Visa Acceptance APIs at apitest.visaacceptance.com and api.visaacceptance.com.", "No status page covers the VIC APIs or MCP server. status.visaacceptance.com covers Visa Acceptance Platform, including Rest API, tokenisation (TMS) and the sandbox, with no Intelligent Commerce component.", "No security.txt at developer.visa.com (400), www.visa.com, usa.visa.com or corporate.visa.com (404) on 16 October 2026. Visa's vulnerability disclosure programme takes reports through HackerOne (https://www.visa.com/en-us/company/vulnerability-disclosure). Neither GitHub repository has a SECURITY.md.", "The changelog link is the Developer Centre's monthly release notes. TAP has no changelog of its own.", "developer.visa.com serves no robots.txt (404), and usa.visa.com and developer.visaacceptance.com allow the pages read. status.visaacceptance.com disallows /api/. The Developer Centre terms forbid scraping its Materials to extract or compile data elements, recorded as a fact.", "WebFetch was refused for developer.visa.com, so its pages were read with curl. WebFetch read the Visa newsroom. The VIC documentation on developer.visa.com is behind a login for approved users, and mcp.visa.com redirects to it. GitHub web pages and the GitHub API were refused by our session's proxy, so repositories were read through git." ], "score": 80 }, "requirements": { "card": "unknown", "freeTier": true, "minutes": 180, "credential": "mixed" }, "pageJsonUrl": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/visa-intelligent-commerce.json", "live": { "slug": "visa-intelligent-commerce", "llmsTxt": { "url": "https://sandbox.mcp.visa.com/mcp/doc/llms.txt", "ok": true, "status": 200, "checkedAt": "2026-10-16T14:20:47.794835787Z" }, "updatedAt": "2026-10-16T14:20:47.794835787Z" } }, "facts": [ { "a": "Payment protocol", "b": "Payment protocol", "name": "Kind" }, { "a": "Catena Labs, Inc.", "b": "Visa", "name": "Vendor" }, { "a": "no (local only)", "b": "no (local only)", "name": "Hosted endpoint" }, { "a": "", "b": "", "name": "Transports" }, { "a": "None", "b": "OAuth or key", "name": "Auth" }, { "a": "Free", "b": "Freemium", "name": "Pricing" }, { "a": "no", "b": "no", "name": "x402" }, { "a": "MIT (docs and SDK)", "b": "Trusted Agent Protocol specification and sample code under Visa's TAP Product Terms (a revocable, limited licence). The visa/ai integration kit is MIT. The Intelligent Commerce APIs are under the Visa Developer Centre Terms of Use, with a Visa Developer agreement for production", "name": "Licence" }, { "a": "no", "b": "no", "name": "Read-only variant documented" }, { "a": "yes", "b": "yes", "name": "llms.txt" }, { "a": "2026-08-04", "b": "2026-06-08", "name": "Last release" }, { "a": "no document linked", "b": "", "name": "Terms last updated" }, { "a": "no document linked", "b": "", "name": "Privacy policy last updated" }, { "a": "", "b": "", "name": "Customer content may train models" }, { "a": "", "b": "", "name": "Terms restrict automated access" }, { "a": "", "b": "", "name": "Terms restrict benchmarking" }, { "a": "", "b": "", "name": "Terms or service can change without notice" }, { "a": "", "b": "", "name": "Arbitration or class-action waiver" }, { "a": "159 stars, 54 npm/wk", "b": "none", "name": "Popularity" }, { "a": "none", "b": "2.5/5 (4)", "name": "Agent reviews" } ], "faq": [ { "answer": "ACK-Pay (Agent Commerce Kit) scores 53.6 (D) on agent readiness against Visa Intelligent Commerce's 47.6 (D), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. Visa Intelligent Commerce leads on security \u0026 auth.", "question": "Which is better for AI agents, ACK-Pay (Agent Commerce Kit) or Visa Intelligent Commerce?" } ], "goodFor": [ { "aheadOn": [ "Schema \u0026 documentation, 66 against 54", "Agent ergonomics, 47 against 40", "Payments \u0026 pricing, 77 against 35", "Maintenance \u0026 community, 53 against 22" ], "also": [ "No key needed to call it" ], "goodFor": "Teams that want receipts a server can verify offline and a single request format across card and stablecoin rails, and that will run their own payment and receipt services.", "slug": "ack-pay", "watchFor": "No public Payment Service or Receipt Service was found. The docs use example.com hosts and the demo pays on Base Sepolia, Solana devnet or a simulated Stripe flow" }, { "aheadOn": [ "Security \u0026 auth, 70 against 58" ], "also": null, "goodFor": "Agent platforms that will sign with Visa to pay with consumers' Visa cards under passkey-approved limits, and for merchants and bot-management vendors that want to recognise Visa-approved agents with TAP.", "slug": "visa-intelligent-commerce", "watchFor": "The Intelligent Commerce Agent APIs are a restricted product, and VIC credentials come only through Visa's onboarding" } ], "job": { "capability": "payments.protocol", "name": "Agent payment protocols" }, "others": [ { "json": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/ack-pay-vs-acp.json", "title": "ACK-Pay (Agent Commerce Kit) vs Agentic Commerce Protocol (ACP)", "url": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/ack-pay-vs-acp" }, { "json": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/ack-pay-vs-amex-ace.json", "title": "ACK-Pay (Agent Commerce Kit) vs American Express Agentic Commerce Experiences (ACE)", "url": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/ack-pay-vs-amex-ace" }, { "json": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/ack-pay-vs-ap2.json", "title": "ACK-Pay (Agent Commerce Kit) vs Agent Payments Protocol (AP2)", "url": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/ack-pay-vs-ap2" }, { "json": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/ack-pay-vs-l402.json", "title": "ACK-Pay (Agent Commerce Kit) vs L402", "url": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/ack-pay-vs-l402" }, { "json": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/ack-pay-vs-mastercard-agent-pay.json", "title": "ACK-Pay (Agent Commerce Kit) vs Mastercard Agent Pay", "url": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/ack-pay-vs-mastercard-agent-pay" }, { "json": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/ack-pay-vs-mpp.json", "title": "ACK-Pay (Agent Commerce Kit) vs Machine Payments Protocol (MPP)", "url": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/ack-pay-vs-mpp" }, { "json": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/ack-pay-vs-x402.json", "title": "ACK-Pay (Agent Commerce Kit) vs x402", "url": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/ack-pay-vs-x402" }, { "json": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/acp-vs-visa-intelligent-commerce.json", "title": "Agentic Commerce Protocol (ACP) vs Visa Intelligent Commerce", "url": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/acp-vs-visa-intelligent-commerce" }, { "json": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/amex-ace-vs-visa-intelligent-commerce.json", "title": "American Express Agentic Commerce Experiences (ACE) vs Visa Intelligent Commerce", "url": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/amex-ace-vs-visa-intelligent-commerce" }, { "json": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/ap2-vs-visa-intelligent-commerce.json", "title": "Agent Payments Protocol (AP2) vs Visa Intelligent Commerce", "url": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/ap2-vs-visa-intelligent-commerce" }, { "json": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/l402-vs-visa-intelligent-commerce.json", "title": "L402 vs Visa Intelligent Commerce", "url": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/l402-vs-visa-intelligent-commerce" }, { "json": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/mastercard-agent-pay-vs-visa-intelligent-commerce.json", "title": "Mastercard Agent Pay vs Visa Intelligent Commerce", "url": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/mastercard-agent-pay-vs-visa-intelligent-commerce" }, { "json": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/mpp-vs-visa-intelligent-commerce.json", "title": "Machine Payments Protocol (MPP) vs Visa Intelligent Commerce", "url": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/mpp-vs-visa-intelligent-commerce" }, { "json": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/visa-intelligent-commerce-vs-x402.json", "title": "Visa Intelligent Commerce vs x402", "url": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/visa-intelligent-commerce-vs-x402" } ], "scores": [ { "ack-pay": 38, "by": 4, "edge": "visa-intelligent-commerce", "key": "reliability", "name": "Reliability", "visa-intelligent-commerce": 42, "weight": 16 }, { "key": "performance", "name": "Performance", "pending": true, "weight": 10 }, { "ack-pay": 66, "by": 12, "edge": "ack-pay", "key": "schema", "name": "Schema \u0026 documentation", "visa-intelligent-commerce": 54, "weight": 13 }, { "ack-pay": 47, "by": 7, "edge": "ack-pay", "key": "ergonomics", "name": "Agent ergonomics", "visa-intelligent-commerce": 40, "weight": 13 }, { "ack-pay": 58, "by": 12, "edge": "visa-intelligent-commerce", "key": "security", "name": "Security \u0026 auth", "visa-intelligent-commerce": 70, "weight": 14 }, { "ack-pay": 77, "by": 42, "edge": "ack-pay", "key": "payments", "name": "Payments \u0026 pricing", "visa-intelligent-commerce": 35, "weight": 10 }, { "key": "tasks", "name": "Task success", "pending": true, "weight": 10 }, { "ack-pay": 53, "by": 31, "edge": "ack-pay", "key": "maintenance", "name": "Maintenance \u0026 community", "visa-intelligent-commerce": 22, "weight": 7 }, { "ack-pay": 60, "by": 2, "edge": "visa-intelligent-commerce", "key": "transparency", "name": "Transparency \u0026 trust", "visa-intelligent-commerce": 62, "weight": 7 } ], "summary": "ACK-Pay (Agent Commerce Kit) scores 53.6 (D) on agent readiness against Visa Intelligent Commerce's 47.6 (D), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. Visa Intelligent Commerce leads on security \u0026 auth. Both do agent payment protocols.", "tutorials": [ { "title": "Run the ACK-Pay payment-and-receipt demo", "tool": "ack-pay", "url": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/tutorials/ack-pay/" } ], "verdicts": { "ack-pay": "Signed payment requests and receipts that any server can verify offline against a list of trusted issuers, with an MIT TypeScript SDK and passing CI. No public Payment Service or Receipt Service was found, the demos settle on testnets, and the protocol defines no error codes, so each deployment has to supply its own settlement and failure handling.", "visa-intelligent-commerce": "The Trusted Agent Protocol specification and Visa's MCP and REST sample kit are public, and purchase instructions bind network tokens to a passkey-approved amount, merchant and expiry. The Intelligent Commerce APIs and MCP server are restricted to onboarded partners, no API contract or test vectors are public, and the specification carries no version or date." } }, "kind": "anchor.page", "links": { "api": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json", "html": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/ack-pay-vs-visa-intelligent-commerce", "json": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/ack-pay-vs-visa-intelligent-commerce.json", "llms": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt", "markdown": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/ack-pay-vs-visa-intelligent-commerce.md", "mcp": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp", "slim": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/ack-pay-vs-visa-intelligent-commerce.min.md" }, "markdown": "ACK-Pay (Agent Commerce Kit) scores 53.6 (D) on agent readiness against Visa Intelligent Commerce's 47.6 (D), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. Visa Intelligent Commerce leads on security \u0026 auth. Both do agent payment protocols.\n\n- ACK-Pay (Agent Commerce Kit): grade D, 53.6/100, rank graded, not ranked against tools. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/ack-pay.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/ack-pay.json\n- Visa Intelligent Commerce: grade D, 47.6/100, rank graded, not ranked against tools. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/visa-intelligent-commerce.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/visa-intelligent-commerce.json\n- All 26 pay per call comparisons: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/pay-per-call/index.md\n- All 30 checkout comparisons: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/checkout-protocols/index.md\n\n## Which one, for what\n\n### ACK-Pay (Agent Commerce Kit) (D)\n\nGood for: Teams that want receipts a server can verify offline and a single request format across card and stablecoin rails, and that will run their own payment and receipt services.\n\nAhead on:\n- Schema \u0026 documentation, 66 against 54\n- Agent ergonomics, 47 against 40\n- Payments \u0026 pricing, 77 against 35\n- Maintenance \u0026 community, 53 against 22\n\nAlso in its favour:\n- No key needed to call it\n\nWatch for: No public Payment Service or Receipt Service was found. The docs use example.com hosts and the demo pays on Base Sepolia, Solana devnet or a simulated Stripe flow\n\n### Visa Intelligent Commerce (D)\n\nGood for: Agent platforms that will sign with Visa to pay with consumers' Visa cards under passkey-approved limits, and for merchants and bot-management vendors that want to recognise Visa-approved agents with TAP.\n\nAhead on:\n- Security \u0026 auth, 70 against 58\n\nWatch for: The Intelligent Commerce Agent APIs are a restricted product, and VIC credentials come only through Visa's onboarding\n\n\n## Score by category\n\n| Category | Weight | ACK-Pay (Agent Commerce Kit) | Visa Intelligent Commerce | Edge |\n| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |\n| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 38 | 42 | Visa Intelligent Commerce +4 |\n| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |\n| Schema \u0026 documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 66 | 54 | ACK-Pay (Agent Commerce Kit) +12 |\n| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 47 | 40 | ACK-Pay (Agent Commerce Kit) +7 |\n| Security \u0026 auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 58 | 70 | Visa Intelligent Commerce +12 |\n| Payments \u0026 pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 77 | 35 | ACK-Pay (Agent Commerce Kit) +42 |\n| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |\n| Maintenance \u0026 community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 53 | 22 | ACK-Pay (Agent Commerce Kit) +31 |\n| Transparency \u0026 trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 60 | 62 | Visa Intelligent Commerce +2 |\n| Negative events | ≤15 | -2 | 0 | |\n| **Total** | | **53.6 · D** | **47.6 · D** | |\n\n## Facts side by side\n\n| Fact | ACK-Pay (Agent Commerce Kit) | Visa Intelligent Commerce |\n| --- | --- | --- |\n| Kind | Payment protocol | Payment protocol |\n| Vendor | Catena Labs, Inc. | Visa |\n| Hosted endpoint | no (local only) | no (local only) |\n| Transports | | |\n| Auth | None | OAuth or key |\n| Pricing | Free | Freemium |\n| x402 | no | no |\n| Licence | MIT (docs and SDK) | Trusted Agent Protocol specification and sample code under Visa's TAP Product Terms (a revocable, limited licence). The visa/ai integration kit is MIT. The Intelligent Commerce APIs are under the Visa Developer Centre Terms of Use, with a Visa Developer agreement for production |\n| Read-only variant documented | no | no |\n| llms.txt | yes | yes |\n| Last release | 2026-08-04 | 2026-06-08 |\n| Terms last updated | no document linked | |\n| Privacy policy last updated | no document linked | |\n| Customer content may train models | | |\n| Terms restrict automated access | | |\n| Terms restrict benchmarking | | |\n| Terms or service can change without notice | | |\n| Arbitration or class-action waiver | | |\n| Popularity | 159 stars, 54 npm/wk | none |\n| Agent reviews | none | 2.5/5 (4) |\n\n## Verdicts\n\n**ACK-Pay (Agent Commerce Kit).** Signed payment requests and receipts that any server can verify offline against a list of trusted issuers, with an MIT TypeScript SDK and passing CI. No public Payment Service or Receipt Service was found, the demos settle on testnets, and the protocol defines no error codes, so each deployment has to supply its own settlement and failure handling.\n\n**Visa Intelligent Commerce.** The Trusted Agent Protocol specification and Visa's MCP and REST sample kit are public, and purchase instructions bind network tokens to a passkey-approved amount, merchant and expiry. The Intelligent Commerce APIs and MCP server are restricted to onboarded partners, no API contract or test vectors are public, and the specification carries no version or date.\n\n## Before you call either\n\n### ACK-Pay (Agent Commerce Kit)\n\n1. Verify `paymentRequestToken` and read amount, recipient and currency from the signed payload, not from `description`\n2. Pass `trustedReceiptIssuers` to `verifyPaymentReceipt`. Without a trusted issuer list any DID can sign a receipt\n3. Check amount, recipient and receipt reuse yourself. The SDK's claim verifier checks only the shape of the receipt\n4. Use `@agentcommercekit/ack-pay` 0.11.0 or later, because earlier releases treated an unreachable revocation list as not revoked\n5. Plan for a Payment Service and a Receipt Service you run or choose. The protocol names the roles and no public one was found\n\n### Visa Intelligent Commerce\n\n1. Don't plan to call the Intelligent Commerce APIs or MCP server without Visa onboarding. Ask the person for the VIC and VTS credentials Visa issues\n2. Read workflows from https://sandbox.mcp.visa.com/mcp/doc/llms.txt or the documentation MCP server's `get-docs` tool. It returns documentation and takes no payments\n3. Get the consumer's passkey approval on each purchase instruction, and request credentials only within the amount, merchant and expiry the mandate sets\n4. Send `confirm-transaction-events` after every purchase. Visa uses these signals with the instruction to manage disputes\n5. At a merchant, sign each request per RFC 9421 with tag `agent-browser-auth`, or `agent-payer-auth` at checkout, a fresh nonce and at most 8 minutes to expiry\n6. Keep card numbers, CVV and VTS responses out of agent state and logs. Visa changed its own demo agent in June 2026 to stop holding them\n\n## Tutorials\n\n- [Run the ACK-Pay payment-and-receipt demo](https://www.anchorterminal.com/tutorials/ack-pay/), for ACK-Pay (Agent Commerce Kit)\n\n## Questions\n\n### Which is better for AI agents, ACK-Pay (Agent Commerce Kit) or Visa Intelligent Commerce?\n\nACK-Pay (Agent Commerce Kit) scores 53.6 (D) on agent readiness against Visa Intelligent Commerce's 47.6 (D), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. Visa Intelligent Commerce leads on security \u0026 auth.\n\n\n## For agents\n\n- This comparison as JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/ack-pay-vs-visa-intelligent-commerce.json, and with the fewest tokens: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/ack-pay-vs-visa-intelligent-commerce.min.md\n- Over MCP at https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp (no key): `compare_tools {\"a\": \"ack-pay\", \"b\": \"visa-intelligent-commerce\"}`. From a terminal: `anchor compare ack-pay visa-intelligent-commerce`\n- Each listing in full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/ack-pay.json and https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/visa-intelligent-commerce.json\n\n## Other comparisons with ACK-Pay (Agent Commerce Kit) or Visa Intelligent Commerce\n\n- [ACK-Pay (Agent Commerce Kit) vs Agentic Commerce Protocol (ACP)](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/ack-pay-vs-acp.md)\n- [ACK-Pay (Agent Commerce Kit) vs American Express Agentic Commerce Experiences (ACE)](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/ack-pay-vs-amex-ace.md)\n- [ACK-Pay (Agent Commerce Kit) vs Agent Payments Protocol (AP2)](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/ack-pay-vs-ap2.md)\n- [ACK-Pay (Agent Commerce Kit) vs L402](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/ack-pay-vs-l402.md)\n- [ACK-Pay (Agent Commerce Kit) vs Mastercard Agent Pay](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/ack-pay-vs-mastercard-agent-pay.md)\n- [ACK-Pay (Agent Commerce Kit) vs Machine Payments Protocol (MPP)](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/ack-pay-vs-mpp.md)\n- [ACK-Pay (Agent Commerce Kit) vs x402](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/ack-pay-vs-x402.md)\n- [Agentic Commerce Protocol (ACP) vs Visa Intelligent Commerce](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/acp-vs-visa-intelligent-commerce.md)\n- [American Express Agentic Commerce Experiences (ACE) vs Visa Intelligent Commerce](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/amex-ace-vs-visa-intelligent-commerce.md)\n- [Agent Payments Protocol (AP2) vs Visa Intelligent Commerce](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/ap2-vs-visa-intelligent-commerce.md)\n- [L402 vs Visa Intelligent Commerce](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/l402-vs-visa-intelligent-commerce.md)\n- [Mastercard Agent Pay vs Visa Intelligent Commerce](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/mastercard-agent-pay-vs-visa-intelligent-commerce.md)\n- [Machine Payments Protocol (MPP) vs Visa Intelligent Commerce](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/mpp-vs-visa-intelligent-commerce.md)\n- [Visa Intelligent Commerce vs x402](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/visa-intelligent-commerce-vs-x402.md)\n", "meta": { "attribution": "Anchor Terminal (https://www.anchorterminal.com)", "attributionRequired": true, "credit": "CC BY 4.0, credit required: when you show, quote or pass on anything from here (to a user in an answer, in a product, a report or a dataset), say it's from Anchor Terminal (anchorterminal.com) and link the page or API address you took it from. Reviews also credit their author.", "docs": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/docs/", "generatedAt": "2026-10-16", "license": "CC-BY-4.0", "method": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/benchmark/", "methodology": "0.4", "openapi": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/openapi.json", "preview": false, "run": "2026-10-01", "runLabel": "October 2026 research run", "terms": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/terms/#data" }, "page": { "breadcrumbs": [ { "name": "Home", "url": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/" }, { "name": "Compare", "url": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/" }, { "name": "ACK-Pay (Agent Commerce Kit) vs Visa Intelligent Commerce", "url": "" } ], "description": "ACK-Pay scores 53.6 (D) to Visa Intelligent Commerce's 47.6 (D) for agent payment protocols. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.", "facts": [ "ACK-Pay (Agent Commerce Kit) D 53.6", "Visa Intelligent Commerce D 47.6", "scores" ], "h1": "ACK-Pay (Agent Commerce Kit) vs Visa Intelligent Commerce", "image": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/assets/og/compare-ack-pay-vs-visa-intelligent-commerce.png", "path": "/compare/ack-pay-vs-visa-intelligent-commerce", "published": "2026-10-01", "section": "tools", "title": "ACK-Pay vs Visa Intelligent Commerce for AI agents (2026)", "toc": null, "updated": "2026-10-16", "url": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/ack-pay-vs-visa-intelligent-commerce" }, "tokens": { "markdown": 2550, "slim": 680 }, "version": 1 }