Google is handing ownership of its Agent Payments Protocol (AP2) to the FIDO Alliance, the industry body best known for developing the passkey authentication standard, in a move designed to make the framework platform-agnostic and community-governed as AI-driven commerce gains momentum.
The donation, announced on Monday, is accompanied by the release of AP2 version 0.2 on GitHub, which introduces support for "Human Not Present" payments, a classification that would allow AI agents to initiate, manage and complete purchases autonomously without requiring a human to approve each individual transaction.
"For agentic technology to scale, it needs to work for everyone," Google said.
AP2 was first unveiled in September 2025 in collaboration with more than 60 technology and payments companies, including Mastercard, PayPal, American Express, Visa, Stripe, Adyen and Checkout.com, as well as e-commerce platforms Shopee and Lazada.
The protocol establishes a common framework for AI agents to transact securely with merchants across any payment method, from credit cards and bank transfers to digital wallets and stablecoins.
At its core, AP2 uses cryptographically signed digital contracts called "Mandates" that serve as tamper-proof, verifiable evidence of a user's instructions.
These are signed using verifiable credentials, providing merchants and payment processors with proof that a transaction was authorised, even when no human is present at the point of sale.
The protocol is designed to work as an extension of both Google's Agent2Agent (A2A) protocol and Anthropic's Model Context Protocol (MCP), the two leading standards for AI agent interoperability.
Google is also collaborating with Coinbase, the Ethereum Foundation and MetaMask on an extension called x402 that would allow agents to use stablecoins for purchases, bridging traditional payments infrastructure with cryptocurrency rails.
Transferring AP2 to the FIDO Alliance ensures the protocol's development is no longer controlled by a single company, a prerequisite for adoption by competing platforms and payment networks.
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Mastercard has been developing complementary standards through its own Agent Pay programme and its Verifiable Intent specification, built on standards from the FIDO Alliance, EMVCo, the Internet Engineering Task Force and the World Wide Web Consortium.
The broader question facing the payments industry is whether a single dominant protocol for agentic transactions will emerge or whether multiple interoperable standards will coexist, a dynamic that remains unresolved as Google, Mastercard, Visa and others each advance their own frameworks.
The recap
- Agent Payments Protocol donated to FIDO Alliance for development.
- Company shared open commerce and payments standards over last months.
- Donation aims to scale agentic technology and boost industry innovation.
