{
 "id": "mandate",
 "group": null,
 "part_of": null,
 "name": "Mandate",
 "aliases": [
  "Payment Mandate",
  "Intent Mandate",
  "Checkout Mandate"
 ],
 "definition_md": "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.",
 "step": "pay",
 "related_protocols": [
  "ap2",
  "ap2-checkout-mandate"
 ],
 "sources": [
  {
   "url": "https://ap2-protocol.org/ap2/checkout_mandate/",
   "date": "2026-09-05",
   "label": "VERIFIED"
  },
  {
   "url": "https://github.com/google-agentic-commerce/AP2/blob/main/docs/ap2/specification.md",
   "date": "2026-04",
   "label": "VERIFIED"
  }
 ],
 "url": "https://agenticweb.wiki/terms/mandate/",
 "category": "pay",
 "type": "term"
}