Agentic Commerce Protocol (ACP) vs EMV Agentic Payments – Framework for Specifications
The map lists them as complementary: sites and agents commonly implement both.
| Agentic Commerce Protocol ACP | EMV Agentic Payments – Framework for Specifications EMV Agentic Payments | |
|---|---|---|
| Lifecycle step | 7 Pay: Settle the bill | 7 Pay: Settle the bill |
| Answers | How do a buyer's agent and a merchant complete a deterministic, programmatic checkout without the agent becoming the merchant of record? | When a card network, issuer, merchant, or wallet sees an AI-agent-initiated card payment, how do they consistently find out what the consumer actually authorised — recurring purchase, spending cap, post-transaction change — rather than each building a bespoke, one-off signal? |
| Governed by | Technical Steering Committee (up to 7 org seats); OpenAI, Stripe, and Meta are lead maintainers, with OpenAI and Stripe as Founding Maintainers holding last-resort veto over mission, neutrality, security, and fork-integrity decisions | EMVCo, the technical body jointly owned by American Express, Discover, JCB, Mastercard, UnionPay and Visa, which creates and manages the EMV Specifications; this framework is being developed by EMVCo's dedicated Agentic Payments Task Force with input from EMVCo Associates and Subscribers, and in collaboration with the FIDO Alliance, the OpenID Foundation, the OpenWallet Foundation and W3C |
| Status (issuer's words) | Beta open standard, interaction model for connecting buyers, agents, and businesses | Draft v1.0, released for public review and comment; EMVCo describes it as ‘a foundation for further industry engagement and potential specification development’, not itself a finished specification |
| Version | 2026-04-17 (date-versioned spec; unreleased/ tracks current development) (2026-04-17) | EMV® Agentic Payments – Framework for Specifications, v1.0 DRAFT (2026-08-31) |
| Form / transport | endpoint | document format |
| Found at | Bilateral capability negotiation (per RFC: capability_negotiation) between agent platform and merchant; no fixed well-known path published | none |
| Implementation | multi-implementation — OpenAI and Stripe (project README) | none found |
| Evidence | 3 verified, 2 reported | 4 verified |
| Primary use case | Let agents buy on behalf of a person | Let agents buy on behalf of a person |
| Last verified | 2026-10-23 (current) | 2026-10-23 (current) |
| Specification | https://github.com/agentic-commerce-protocol/agentic-commerce-protocol | https://www.emvco.com/resources/emv-agentic-payments-framework-for-specifications-v1-0-draft-comment-period-ends-30-sept-2026/ |
When to use which
- Choose Agentic Commerce Protocol when your question is “How do a buyer's agent and a merchant complete a deterministic, programmatic checkout without the agent becoming the merchant of record?” and you accept its maturity: status "Beta open standard, interaction model for connecting buyers, agents, and businesses", implementation multi-implementation (OpenAI and Stripe (project README)).
- Choose EMV Agentic Payments – Framework for Specifications when your question is “When a card network, issuer, merchant, or wallet sees an AI-agent-initiated card payment, how do they consistently find out what the consumer actually authorised — recurring purchase, spending cap, post-transaction change — rather than each building a bespoke, one-off signal?” and you accept its maturity: status "Draft v1.0, released for public review and comment; EMVCo describes it as ‘a foundation for further industry engagement and potential specification development’, not itself a finished specification", implementation none found.
Read the full articles
- Agentic Commerce Protocol: How do a buyer's agent and a merchant complete a deterministic, programmatic checkout without the agent becoming the merchant of record?
- EMV Agentic Payments – Framework for Specifications: When a card network, issuer, merchant, or wallet sees an AI-agent-initiated card payment, how do they consistently find out what the consumer actually authorised — recurring purchase, spending cap, post-transaction change — rather than each building a bespoke, one-off signal?
agentic-commerce-protocol.json · emv-agentic-payments.json · Markdown