Learn
Learn
The evergreen reference, arranged from the basics to the technical detail. New here? Start at the top and work down.
Start here
New to agentic commerce? Begin with these.
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.
What 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.
Get oriented
The map of standards, and the vocabulary to read the rest.
Agentic 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.
The Agentic Commerce Protocol Stack: ACP vs AP2 vs UCP vs MCP vs x402 vs MPP
A neutral, plain-language comparison of the protocols behind agentic commerce: ACP, AP2, UCP, MCP, A2A, x402, and MPP. What each one does, who backs it, and how they fit together.
Agentic Commerce Glossary
Plain-language definitions of the key agentic commerce terms and acronyms: agent, mandate, ACP, AP2, UCP, MCP, x402, MPP, Shared Payment Token, tokenization, passkey, merchant of record, verifiable credential, and more.
How it works
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.
AP2 Explained: The Agent Payments Protocol
A neutral guide to the Agent Payments Protocol (AP2): how it proves a user authorized an agent's purchase, the mandate model, its move to the FIDO Alliance, and how it relates to ACP, A2A, MCP, and x402.
AP2 vs Network Tokens: An Open Standard or the Card Networks' Own Rails?
A neutral comparison of AP2, the open agent payment-authorization standard, and the card networks' own agent-payment programs (Visa Intelligent Commerce, Mastercard Agent Pay, American Express): how they differ, where they overlap, and why they are converging rather than simply competing.
UCP Explained: The Universal Commerce Protocol
A neutral guide to the Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP): Google's open standard for the full agentic shopping journey, who governs it, how it relates to ACP and AP2, and what is actually live.
MCP Explained: The Model Context Protocol in Agentic Commerce
A neutral guide to the Model Context Protocol (MCP) and its role in agentic commerce: the discovery layer agents use to find and call a merchant's tools, how it composes with the commerce protocols, and how it shows up in payments.
A2A Explained: The Agent-to-Agent Protocol
A short, neutral guide to A2A, the Agent-to-Agent protocol: the open standard for agents to communicate and delegate to one another, now an Agentic AI Foundation project, and the coordination layer that UCP, AP2, and x402 build on in agentic commerce.
ACP vs UCP: Comparing the Two Agentic Commerce Checkout Standards
A neutral, side-by-side comparison of ACP and UCP, the two open agentic commerce checkout standards: who backs each, how their scope differs, what is live, how payment works, and whether a merchant should support one or both.
MPP Explained: The Machine Payments Protocol
A neutral guide to the Machine Payments Protocol (MPP): the open standard from Stripe and Tempo that lets AI agents pay for APIs, compute, and services programmatically, how it works, what it settles in, and how it relates to x402, ACP, and AP2.
x402 Explained: HTTP 402 for Machine-Native Payments
A neutral guide to x402: Coinbase's open protocol that revives the HTTP 402 status so software can pay software in stablecoins, how the facilitator model works, who governs it, and how it relates to MPP and AP2.
x402 vs MPP: Comparing the Machine-Native Payment Protocols
A neutral comparison of x402 and MPP, the two machine-native settlement standards for agents paying for APIs, compute, and services: what they share, how they differ in sponsor, settlement, and rails, and when to use each.
How to Prepare Your Product Catalog for Agentic Commerce
A practical, protocol-agnostic guide to getting your product data agent-ready: what 'agent-ready' means, the fields that matter most, why live-store parity is non-negotiable, where the feed goes, and how to curate and keep it current.
Build
Hands-on guides for shipping agentic commerce.
LCP Explained: The Legal Context Protocol
A neutral guide to the Legal Context Protocol (LCP): the open standard from the American Arbitration Association and Integra Ledger that publishes the legal terms, consent, and dispute route behind an agent transaction at a well-known URL.
How to Implement ACP: A Merchant Integration Walkthrough
A practical builder's guide to integrating the Agentic Commerce Protocol as a merchant: the three responsibilities (product feed, the Agentic Checkout API, and accepting a Shared Payment Token), the real endpoints and payloads, and how the payment flows without your store ever seeing a card.
How to Build a Remote MCP Server: A Worked Example
A practical builder's guide to shipping a remote Model Context Protocol server, using the Agentic Commerce Atlas's own Cloudflare Worker as the worked example: the Streamable HTTP transport, the JSON-RPC methods you must implement, how to define and serve tools, and how to deploy and test it.
MCP For Ecommerce: How Merchants Expose Catalog, Cart, Checkout, And Order Tools To AI Agents
A practical guide to MCP for ecommerce: the merchant tools an AI agent needs, how MCP fits with ACP and UCP, what to expose, what to protect, and how to design a commerce MCP server.
AP2 Mandates in Practice: Credential Structure, Signing, and Verification
A builder's guide to AP2 mandates as they actually work in v0.2: the Checkout and Payment mandates, their open and closed states, the SD-JWT verifiable-credential structure, how the delegation chain is signed and verified, and how human-present and human-not-present flows differ in the data.
Decide and assess
Weighing the move, for business leaders.
Agentic Commerce Risks and Readiness
A neutral guide to the real risks of agentic commerce, agent impersonation, unauthorized purchases, chargebacks and liability, privacy, and channel disintermediation, how the standards address each, and a readiness checklist for getting in safely.
Agentic Commerce Readiness Checklist: What Merchants Need Before AI Agents Can Buy
A practical readiness checklist for merchants preparing for agentic commerce: product data, discoverability, checkout, payments, authorization, evidence, governance, and risk.
Agentic Commerce RFP Questions: What To Ask Platforms, Processors, And AI Vendors
A buyer-ready guide to agentic commerce RFP questions for evaluating platforms, processors, payment providers, AI vendors, and agentic checkout integrations.
Agentic Commerce by Business Type: Playbooks for Retailers, Brands, Marketplaces, and Services
Deeper, role-specific guidance for agentic commerce: the distinct opportunity, the specific risk, the concrete first moves, the metrics, and the protocols that matter most for a retailer, a brand or manufacturer, a marketplace or platform, and a services business.
Agentic Commerce For Retailers: A Practical Readiness Playbook
A retailer-focused playbook for agentic commerce: how to prepare product data, agent discoverability, checkout, payments, authorization, operations, measurement, and channel economics.