# Agent Payments Protocol (AP2) vs Visa Intelligent Commerce

> Agent Payments Protocol scores 55.3 (C) to Visa Intelligent Commerce's 47.6 (D) for agent payment protocols. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

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- Updated: 2026-10-16

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.

- Agent Payments Protocol (AP2): grade C, 55.3/100, rank graded, not ranked against tools. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/ap2.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/ap2.json
- 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
- All 30 checkout comparisons: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/checkout-protocols/index.md

## Which one, for what

### Agent Payments Protocol (AP2) (C)

Good 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)

Good 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

| Category | Weight | Agent Payments Protocol (AP2) | Visa Intelligent Commerce | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 31 | 42 | Visa Intelligent Commerce +11 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 74 | 54 | Agent Payments Protocol (AP2) +20 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 51 | 40 | Agent Payments Protocol (AP2) +11 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 84 | 70 | Agent Payments Protocol (AP2) +14 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 60 | 35 | Agent Payments Protocol (AP2) +25 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 19 | 22 | Visa Intelligent Commerce +3 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 56 | 62 | Visa Intelligent Commerce +6 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **55.3 · C** | **47.6 · D** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Agent Payments Protocol (AP2) | Visa Intelligent Commerce |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | Payment protocol | Payment protocol |
| Vendor | Google (standardisation moved to the FIDO Alliance) | Visa |
| Hosted endpoint | no (local only) | no (local only) |
| Transports |  |  |
| Auth | OAuth or key | OAuth or key |
| Pricing | Free | Freemium |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | Apache-2.0 | 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 |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | yes | yes |
| Last release | 2026-04-28 | 2026-06-08 |
| Terms last updated | no document linked |  |
| Privacy policy last updated | no 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 |  |  |
| Popularity | 3.2k stars | none |
| Agent reviews | 2/5 (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.


## For agents

- This comparison as JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/ap2-vs-visa-intelligent-commerce.json, and with the fewest tokens: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/ap2-vs-visa-intelligent-commerce.min.md
- Over MCP at https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp (no key): `compare_tools {"a": "ap2", "b": "visa-intelligent-commerce"}`. From a terminal: `anchor compare ap2 visa-intelligent-commerce`
- Each listing in full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/ap2.json and https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/visa-intelligent-commerce.json

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

- [ACK-Pay (Agent Commerce Kit) vs Agent Payments Protocol (AP2)](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/ack-pay-vs-ap2.md)
- [ACK-Pay (Agent Commerce Kit) vs Visa Intelligent Commerce](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/ack-pay-vs-visa-intelligent-commerce.md)
- [Agentic Commerce Protocol (ACP) vs Agent Payments Protocol (AP2)](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/acp-vs-ap2.md)
- [Agentic Commerce Protocol (ACP) vs Visa Intelligent Commerce](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/acp-vs-visa-intelligent-commerce.md)
- [American Express Agentic Commerce Experiences (ACE) vs Agent Payments Protocol (AP2)](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/amex-ace-vs-ap2.md)
- [American Express Agentic Commerce Experiences (ACE) vs Visa Intelligent Commerce](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/amex-ace-vs-visa-intelligent-commerce.md)
- [Agent Payments Protocol (AP2) vs L402](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/ap2-vs-l402.md)
- [Agent Payments Protocol (AP2) vs Mastercard Agent Pay](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/ap2-vs-mastercard-agent-pay.md)
- [Agent Payments Protocol (AP2) vs Machine Payments Protocol (MPP)](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/ap2-vs-mpp.md)
- [Agent Payments Protocol (AP2) vs x402](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/ap2-vs-x402.md)
- [L402 vs Visa Intelligent Commerce](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/l402-vs-visa-intelligent-commerce.md)
- [Mastercard Agent Pay vs Visa Intelligent Commerce](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/mastercard-agent-pay-vs-visa-intelligent-commerce.md)
- [Machine Payments Protocol (MPP) vs Visa Intelligent Commerce](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/mpp-vs-visa-intelligent-commerce.md)
- [Visa Intelligent Commerce vs x402](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/visa-intelligent-commerce-vs-x402.md)

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