# Mandate

[7 · Pay](/category/pay/)

| Mandate |
| --- |
| Category | [Pay](/category/pay/) |
| Also known as | Payment Mandate, Intent Mandate, Checkout Mandate |
| Related | [Agent Payments Protocol](/protocols/ap2/), [AP2 Checkout Mandate](/protocols/ap2-checkout-mandate/) |

[Pay](/category/pay/) 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.

## Instances

Not applicable.

## See also

- [Agent Payments Protocol](/protocols/ap2/)
- [AP2 Checkout Mandate](/protocols/ap2-checkout-mandate/)

## References

- [https://ap2-protocol.org/ap2/checkout_mandate/](https://ap2-protocol.org/ap2/checkout_mandate/) (2026-09-05) VERIFIED
- [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) (2026-04) VERIFIED

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