Independent · Vendor-neutral
The map for agentic commerce.
AI agents are starting to browse, choose, and pay on people's behalf. The standards are multiplying and the landscape is moving weekly. Atlas is the neutral reference that explains what exists, how it works, and what it means.
Start here
Follow the full path →New to agentic commerce? Read these three in order, then keep going through the reference from there.
Introducing Agentic Commerce
A plain-language, no-jargon introduction to agentic commerce for newcomers: what it is, why it matters, and how it differs from normal online shopping, in a few minutes.
Step 2What Is Agentic Commerce?
A plain-language explanation of agentic commerce: AI agents that browse, choose, and pay on a person's behalf. How a transaction flows, why it is happening now, what is actually live, and who the players are.
Step 3Agentic Commerce Examples: How AI Agents Shop, Decide, And Pay
Concrete examples of agentic commerce across retail, subscriptions, services, B2B procurement, travel, and machine-to-machine payments, with live, announced, and hypothetical flows separated.
Or follow a guided path
Prefer to dive in by role? Each path is a short, ordered set of readings for a specific audience.
What it means for your business
What agentic commerce is, who's building it, and how the money and trust work. No implementation detail.
For buildersBuild with the protocols
The full stack, each standard in depth, how agents pay, and how to query this reference from your own agent.
The stack at a glance
Full comparison →Go deeper
See the full reference →Once you have the basics, the reference goes into how agents pay and each protocol in depth.
How AI Agents Pay
How AI agents actually pay: tokenization, signed mandates, passkeys and delegated authority, and the network products from Visa, Mastercard, American Express, PayPal, Stripe, and the x402 stablecoin rail. What is live versus announced.
AI Shopping Agent Authorization: Mandates, Tokens, Passkeys, And Liability
How payment authorization works when AI shopping agents buy for users: mandates, scoped tokens, passkeys, network agent programs, liability gaps, and merchant evidence.
ACP Explained: The Agentic Commerce Protocol
A neutral guide to the Agentic Commerce Protocol (ACP): what it is, who maintains it, how payment flows through a Shared Payment Token, what is actually live, and how it relates to AP2, MCP, and UCP.
Latest
News & analysis →Google Brings UCP-Powered Direct Checkout to Canada in AI Mode and Gemini
On 4 November 2026 Google began rolling out direct checkout powered by the Universal Commerce Protocol to Canadian shoppers in AI Mode in Search and the Gemini app, paying with Google Pay, naming lululemon, Shoppers Drug Mart, Simons and select Shopify merchants among eligible retailers.
NewsShopify Says Orders From AI Channels Grew 3.3x as Shoppers Began Experimenting With Delegating Purchases to Agents
On its 3 November 2026 third-quarter earnings call, Shopify said AI traffic was up 2.6x year over year, orders were growing faster at 3.3x, and Q3 was the first quarter it saw shoppers experimenting with delegated purchasing through personal agents. It gave growth multiples, not volumes.
NewsPersonal Agent Protocol: Sierra and Meta Draft an Account-Access Standard for Agents
On 6 October 2026 Sierra and Meta announced the Personal Agent Protocol (Poppy), and on 9 October published a draft 0.1 specification with design partners including OpenAI, Visa, Mastercard, PayPal, Shopify, Stripe and Walmart. It covers how a personal agent signs a user in and acts at a company, not payments.
For AI agents & builders
Query the Atlas over MCP
Connect this reference to your AI coding agent to look up protocols and search the Atlas live, or read it as plain files.