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 →Ant International, Mastercard and Visa Begin Work on Know-Your-Agent Interoperability
Announced 9 to 10 September 2026, the three companies are starting a collaboration to make AI agent identity portable across payment networks, covering operator traceability, shared certification and continuous monitoring. It is a statement of intent, not yet a specification.
NewsMastercard Debuts Agent Connect and Expands Agent Suite for Merchants
On 9 September 2026 Mastercard introduced Mastercard Agent Connect, a single integration linking merchants, AI agents, digital platforms and payment providers, and updated Agent Suite for Merchants to make merchant-defined product data readable by agents. Mastercard also said it will make Anthropic's commerce agent blueprint available to merchants.
NewsEMVCo Proposes an Intent Layer for Card-Based Agentic Payments
On 1 September 2026 EMVCo released a draft EMV Agentic Payments Framework for Specifications for public comment, proposing a shared layer called Intent Services that would let payment participants register, reference, retrieve and manage consumer-authorised intent before, during and after an agent-initiated transaction. The comment period closes 30 September 2026.
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.