# Verifiable Intent (VI) vs Agent Decision Commitments for Payments (ADC)

The map lists them as complementary: sites and agents commonly implement both.

[9 Account](/category/account/) [Verifiable Intent](/protocols/vi/) · [9 Account](/category/account/) [Agent Decision Commitments for Payments](/protocols/agent-decision-commitment/)

|  | [Verifiable Intent](/protocols/vi/) VI | [Agent Decision Commitments for Payments](/protocols/agent-decision-commitment/) ADC |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Lifecycle step | 9 Account: Prove what happened; be judged | 9 Account: Prove what happened; be judged |
| Answers | After an agent completes a purchase on a user's behalf, can the merchant, issuer and consumer all point to the same cryptographic record of what the user actually authorized? | How can an agent's payment decision, including the content it gave the model, be committed to before payment and later disclosed to dispute participants for verification? |
| Governed by | Mastercard; contributed to the FIDO Alliance Payments TWG (2026-04-28); built on FIDO Alliance, EMVCo, IETF and W3C primitives | Individual Internet-Draft; discussion on DISPATCH, SCITT and OAuth mailing lists |
| Status (issuer's words) | Draft (v0.1); open-sourced specification and reference implementation | Internet-Draft, Intended Status: Experimental; expires 18 April 2027 |
| Version | 0.1-draft (2026-02-18) | draft-milan-agent-decision-commitment-00 (2026-10-15) |
| Form / transport | document format | document format |
| Found at | none | Decision context claim (JWT claim "decision_context") carried in a payment mandate or payload; commitment registered with a SCITT transparency service |
| Implementation | prototype | none found |
| Evidence | 4 verified | 1 reported |
| Primary use case | Let agents buy on behalf of a person | Audit what an agent did |
| Last verified | 2026-10-23 (current) | 2026-10-23 (current) |
| Specification | [https://verifiableintent.dev/spec/](https://verifiableintent.dev/spec/) | [https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-milan-agent-decision-commitment-00](https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-milan-agent-decision-commitment-00) |

## When to use which

- Choose Verifiable Intent when your question is “After an agent completes a purchase on a user's behalf, can the merchant, issuer and consumer all point to the same cryptographic record of what the user actually authorized?” and you accept its maturity: status "Draft (v0.1); open-sourced specification and reference implementation", implementation prototype.
- Choose Agent Decision Commitments for Payments when your question is “How can an agent's payment decision, including the content it gave the model, be committed to before payment and later disclosed to dispute participants for verification?” and you accept its maturity: status "Internet-Draft, Intended Status: Experimental; expires 18 April 2027", implementation none found.

Guidance is derived from the two records (question, status, implementation, prerequisites, pairings), not from opinion. Each record's page carries its numbered references.

## Read the full articles

- [Verifiable Intent](/protocols/vi/): After an agent completes a purchase on a user's behalf, can the merchant, issuer and consumer all point to the same cryptographic record of what the user actually authorized?
- [Agent Decision Commitments for Payments](/protocols/agent-decision-commitment/): How can an agent's payment decision, including the content it gave the model, be committed to before payment and later disclosed to dispute participants for verification?

Ask the MCP server to compare any two: the compare-protocols prompt, or get on both ids. [Connect](/connect/).

[vi.json](/data/protocols/vi.json) · [agent-decision-commitment.json](/data/protocols/agent-decision-commitment.json) · [Markdown](/compare/vi-vs-agent-decision-commitment/index.md)