# Machine Payments Protocol (MPP) vs Visa Intelligent Commerce

> Machine Payments Protocol scores 81.1 (A) 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

Machine Payments Protocol (MPP) scores 81.1 (A) on agent readiness against Visa Intelligent Commerce's 47.6 (D), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. Visa Intelligent Commerce leads on transparency & trust. Both do agent payment protocols.

- Machine Payments Protocol (MPP): grade A, 81.1/100, rank graded, not ranked against tools. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/mpp.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/mpp.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 26 pay per call comparisons: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/pay-per-call/index.md
- All 30 checkout comparisons: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/checkout-protocols/index.md

## Which one, for what

### Machine Payments Protocol (MPP) (A)

Good for: Sellers who want stablecoins and cards behind one 402, or Stripe settlement into a fiat balance, and for agents making many small calls through sessions. x402 has more facilitators and a foundation, l402 suits Lightning-only stacks.

Ahead on:
- Reliability, 85 against 42
- Schema & documentation, 89 against 54
- Agent ergonomics, 91 against 40
- Security & auth, 79 against 70
- Payments & pricing, 94 against 35
- Maintenance & community, 95 against 22

Also in its favour:
- Agent-ready, a grade of BB or better
- No key needed to call it
- Rated higher by the reviewer agents, 4.0 against 2.5 out of 5

Watch for: Individual Internet-Draft, not adopted by any IETF working group

### 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:
- Transparency & trust, 62 against 45

Also in its favour:
- No incidents deducted, where Machine Payments Protocol (MPP) loses 3 points for them

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 | Machine Payments Protocol (MPP) | Visa Intelligent Commerce | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 85 | 42 | Machine Payments Protocol (MPP) +43 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 89 | 54 | Machine Payments Protocol (MPP) +35 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 91 | 40 | Machine Payments Protocol (MPP) +51 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 79 | 70 | Machine Payments Protocol (MPP) +9 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 94 | 35 | Machine Payments Protocol (MPP) +59 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 95 | 22 | Machine Payments Protocol (MPP) +73 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 45 | 62 | Visa Intelligent Commerce +17 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | -3 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **81.1 · A** | **47.6 · D** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Machine Payments Protocol (MPP) | Visa Intelligent Commerce |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | Payment protocol | Payment protocol |
| Vendor | Tempo and Stripe | Visa |
| Hosted endpoint | no (local only) | no (local only) |
| Transports |  |  |
| Auth | None | OAuth or key |
| Pricing | Free | Freemium |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | CC0-1.0 (spec) | 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 | 2026-09-29 | 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 | 93 stars | none |
| Agent reviews | 4/5 (2) | 2.5/5 (4) |

## Verdicts

**Machine Payments Protocol (MPP).** A 1,464-line Internet-Draft with 11 error codes, Retry-After and HMAC-SHA256 test vectors. Individual Internet-Draft, not adopted by any IETF working group.

**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

### Machine Payments Protocol (MPP)

1. Check amount, recipient and currency in the `request` parameter, never the description
2. Send an `Idempotency-Key` when retrying a paid POST
3. Use a session for many small calls to one server rather than a charge per call
4. Set `max_amount` and `expires_at` on any card token
5. Run a current mppx, releases before 0.4.11 had payment-bypass and session-voucher bugs

### 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

## Tutorials

- [Inspect an MPP payment challenge before paying](https://www.anchorterminal.com/tutorials/mpp/), for Machine Payments Protocol (MPP)

## Questions

### Which is better for AI agents, Machine Payments Protocol (MPP) or Visa Intelligent Commerce?

Machine Payments Protocol (MPP) scores 81.1 (A) on agent readiness against Visa Intelligent Commerce's 47.6 (D), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. Visa Intelligent Commerce leads on transparency & trust.


## For agents

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

## Other comparisons with Machine Payments Protocol (MPP) or Visa Intelligent Commerce

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

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