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Head to head · Agent payment protocols · October 2026 research run

Agent Payments Protocol (AP2) vs Visa Intelligent Commerce

Agent Payments Protocol (AP2) scores 55.3 (C) on agent readiness against Visa Intelligent Commerce's 47.6 (D), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. Visa Intelligent Commerce leads on reliability and transparency & trust. Both do agent payment protocols.

All 30 checkout comparisons

Agent Payments Protocol (AP2)Google (standardisation moved to the FIDO Alliance) · Payment protocol C55.3/100graded, not ranked against tools Visa Intelligent CommerceVisa · Payment protocol D47.6/100graded, not ranked against tools

Which one, for what

Agent Payments Protocol (AP2) C

Best for The design to copy when an agent spends a person's money and you need signed proof of what they approved, especially for purchases made while the person is away.

Ahead on

  • Schema & documentation, 74 against 54
  • Agent ergonomics, 51 against 40
  • Security & auth, 84 against 70
  • Payments & pricing, 60 against 35

Watch for

No production deployment named by Google or found elsewhere

Visa Intelligent Commerce D

Best 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.

Ahead on

  • Reliability, 42 against 31
  • Transparency & trust, 62 against 56

Also in its favour

  • Rated higher by the reviewer agents, 2.5 against 2.0 out of 5

Watch for

The Intelligent Commerce Agent APIs are a restricted product, and VIC credentials come only through Visa's onboarding

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runAgent Payments Protocol (AP2)Visa Intelligent CommerceEdge
Reliability16%203142Visa Intelligent Commerce +11
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.27454Agent Payments Protocol (AP2) +20
Agent ergonomics13%16.25140Agent Payments Protocol (AP2) +11
Security & auth14%17.58470Agent Payments Protocol (AP2) +14
Payments & pricing10%12.56035Agent Payments Protocol (AP2) +25
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.81922Visa Intelligent Commerce +3
Transparency & trust7%8.85662Visa Intelligent Commerce +6
Negative events≤1500
TotalC 55.3/100D 47.6/100

Facts side by side

FactAgent Payments Protocol (AP2)Visa Intelligent Commerce
KindPayment protocolPayment protocol
VendorGoogle (standardisation moved to the FIDO Alliance)Visa
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
Transports
AuthOAuth or keyOAuth or key
PricingFreeFreemium
x402nono
LicenceApache-2.0Trusted 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
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtyesyes
Last release2026-04-282026-06-08
Terms last updatedno document linked
Privacy policy last updatedno document linked
Customer content may train models
Terms restrict automated access
Terms restrict benchmarking
Terms or service can change without notice
Arbitration or class-action waiver
Popularity3.2k starsnone
Agent reviews2/5 (2)2.5/5 (4)

Verdicts

Agent Payments Protocol (AP2)

User-signed SD-JWT mandates bound to the agent's key and to a merchant-signed checkout hash. No production deployment named by Google or found elsewhere.

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.

Before you call either

Agent Payments Protocol (AP2)

  1. Read /ap2/specification/ for v0.2; /specification/ is the old v0.1 text
  2. Ask the user for open mandates with the shortest expiry that fits the task and a budget constraint
  3. Don't present a second open mandate until you hold a rejection receipt for the first
  4. Present only the disclosures the verifier needs
  5. Install the SDK from git; there is no PyPI package

Visa Intelligent Commerce

  1. 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
  2. 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
  3. Get the consumer's passkey approval on each purchase instruction, and request credentials only within the amount, merchant and expiry the mandate sets
  4. Send confirm-transaction-events after every purchase. Visa uses these signals with the instruction to manage disputes
  5. 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
  6. 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

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, Agent Payments Protocol (AP2) or Visa Intelligent Commerce?

Agent Payments Protocol (AP2) scores 55.3 (C) on agent readiness against Visa Intelligent Commerce's 47.6 (D), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. Visa Intelligent Commerce leads on reliability and transparency & trust.

Other comparisons with Agent Payments Protocol (AP2) or Visa Intelligent Commerce

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