---
type: Glossary Term
title: "Mandate"
description: "A mandate in Google's Agent Payments Protocol (AP2) is a cryptographically signed, verifiable credential that authorises an agent to act on a person's behalf for a specific purchase step."
resource: "https://agenticweb.wiki/terms/mandate/"
tags: ["glossary", "pay"]
status: stable
generated: { by: agenticweb-builder/1.0, at: 2026-10-30T00:00:00Z }
verified: { by: process:agenticweb-engine, at: 2026-10-30T00:00:00Z }
stale_after: 2026-11-29T00:00:00Z
sources:
  - id: ref-1
    resource: "https://ap2-protocol.org/ap2/checkout_mandate/"
    last_modified: 2026-09-05T00:00:00Z
  - id: ref-2
    resource: "https://github.com/google-agentic-commerce/AP2/blob/main/docs/ap2/specification.md"
    last_modified: 2026-04-01T00:00:00Z
---

# Mandate

A **mandate** in Google's Agent Payments Protocol (AP2) is a cryptographically signed, verifiable credential that authorises an agent to act on a person's behalf for a specific purchase step. AP2 defines a chain of them: an intent mandate captures what the user asked for, a cart mandate binds the agent to specific items and a price, and a payment mandate authorises the actual charge; the Checkout Mandate is a related object, created by the shopping agent, rendered to the user, and countersigned by the merchant, that closes over an immutable, hashed checkout payload (`checkout_jwt`) so all three parties can verify what was actually agreed. Mandates use the SD-JWT verifiable-credential format, with a `vct` claim identifying the mandate type and version (for example `mandate.checkout.1`). The purpose is to let a human authorise an agent to transact without handing the agent standing account access: each mandate is scoped, signed and auditable after the fact. Used by: ap2, ap2-checkout-mandate.

# Knowledge Graph

* **Related standards**: [Agent Payments Protocol (AP2)](/okf/protocols/ap2.md), [AP2 Checkout Mandate](/okf/protocols/ap2-checkout-mandate.md)

[^ref-1]: https://ap2-protocol.org/ap2/checkout_mandate/ (https://ap2-protocol.org/ap2/checkout_mandate/)
[^ref-2]: https://github.com/google-agentic-commerce/AP2/blob/main/docs/ap2/specification.md (https://github.com/google-agentic-commerce/AP2/blob/main/docs/ap2/specification.md)