Google unveils master plan for letting AI shop on your behalf
- Reference: 1758046810
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2025/09/16/google_unveils_masterplan_for_letting/
- Source link:
The principle is that shoppers can use AI agents to create a shopping list, exchange information with merchants, and complete payment transactions, without the need for final, human approval. For example, a music fan could tell an agent to buy concert tickets that go on sale at midnight and then go to sleep, knowing that the agent would buy the number and location of tickets they had asked for (presumably with a price limit).
[1]Youtube Video
[2]
For vendors and payment processors, the protocol provides a verifiable paper trail – or mandate – that they can back trace and check. End users can set up an Intent Mandate, which says what they want and how much they wish to pay for it. If the purchase is taking place in real-time (ex: "find me a pair of white shoes"), then the human can personally approve the purchase by signing a Cart Mandate. If the purchase takes place when the human is offline (ex: "get me two tickets at midnight and don't pay more than $100 each"), the Intent Mandate can also give permission for the agent to generate its own Cart Mandate.
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"This chain of evidence culminates in securely linking your payment method to the verified contents of the Cart Mandate," Google [5]wrote in a blog post.
"This complete sequence — from intent, to cart, to payment — creates a non-repudiable audit trail that answers the critical questions of authorization and authenticity, providing a clear foundation for accountability."
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We've asked Google for more details on security checks that can be built into the system and will update this story if we hear back.
The AP2 scheme is an open protocol that works with Google's existing [7]Agent2Agent (A2A) data-sharing systems and Anthropic's [8]Model Context Protocol (MCP) to allow secure information flows. It's part of a wider move to allow AI engines to communicate securely with each other, something the Chocolate Factory has been [9]pushing hard of late.
At launch, Google has signed up over 60 companies with major players like Mastercard, PayPal, American Express, and Worldpay getting on board. Salesforce, Red Hat, Adobe, Intuit, and Cloudflare have also joined.
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AP2 is also supporting cryptocurrency payments using the x402 protocol, to allow digicash transactions using the same security system. Coinbase, Metamask, and the Ethereum Foundation have already signed up.
"x402 and AP2 show that agent-to-agent payments aren’t just an experiment anymore, they’re becoming part of how developers actually build," said Erik Reppel, head of engineering at the Coinbase Developer Platform in a canned statement.
"Bringing x402 into AP2 to power stablecoin payments made sense - it’s a natural playground for agents to start transacting with each other and testing out crypto rails. And it’s exciting to see the idea of agents paying each other resonate with the broader AI community."
While the system has some big-name backers, security remains critical. Given the propensity of online thieves to abuse payment processing, hopefully Google will have adequate protections in place. Otherwise, you may be seeing headlines about AI-driven theft in the future. ®
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[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yLTp3ic2j5c
[2] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/aiml&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2aMnd9tXouu2muyyuX6x1WwAAAUc&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[3] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/aiml&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44aMnd9tXouu2muyyuX6x1WwAAAUc&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[4] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/aiml&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33aMnd9tXouu2muyyuX6x1WwAAAUc&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[5] https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/ai-machine-learning/announcing-agents-to-payments-ap2-protocol/
[6] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/aiml&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44aMnd9tXouu2muyyuX6x1WwAAAUc&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2025/05/20/agent_name_service_proposal/
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2025/07/12/ai_agent_protocols_mcp_a2a/
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2025/04/10/google_agentic_ai_cloud_next/
[10] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/aiml&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33aMnd9tXouu2muyyuX6x1WwAAAUc&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[11] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Re: No. ... FFS Tap and go cards will have no limits (in the UK) and now 'AI' magic orders !!!
Actually, there is MUCH more to be said ... because they are extremely deaf when it comes to stopping the headlong rush to 'AI' nirvana !!!
I shall begin ...
... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no ... no
For gods sake ... NO !!!
Any card that allows this is going to be cut into 1000 pieces and the account closed !!!
The default should be NOT ENABLED ... period
The customer should have the ability to make this PERMANENT ... period
Once set the ability to change it with a phone call or using a Banking app is ABSOLUTE ZERO ... period
IF this is not the case some Ne'er-do-well will enable it and delivery 1000 'Cartier Watches' to some address before you realise !!!
Just wait and see if this sort of thing happens, in spite of the so called security they will put in place !!!
Guardrails ... once again ... anyone ... maybe it should be called 'Guardfails' !!!
:)
This won't be abused at all.
Fuck off
"For example, a music fan could tell an agent to buy concert tickets that go on sale at midnight and then go to sleep, knowing that the agent would buy the number and location of tickets they had asked for (presumably with a price limit)."
So every concert will now be sold out in 1 nanosecond by touts running bot farms (it's bad enough now).
Then your AI agent will pay £1million because it thought you really wanted it.
Oh yeah also I ALWAYS search for "A pair of white trainers"
These people really should get out into the real world occasionally.
Google is just another scummy corporation that needs to die.
Re: Fuck off
"For example, a music fan could tell an agent to buy concert tickets that go on sale at midnight and then go to sleep, knowing that the agent would buy the number and location of tickets they had asked for (presumably with a price limit)."
That could already be done if concert tix were sold via a bidding process. The first ten rows might go for outrageous prices, but the nosebleed seats might sell for $1. Bands would be better able to sell out, more merch would be sold, the concessions stands would do more business and the car park will be filled. Minimum prices could be put on the prime tickets to hedge a bit, but a lot of touts would have a harder time. There could also be a last minute flash auction where people could sell back tickets they purchased for the money paid if it turns out they can't go. Limit X tickets/credit card or account.
Trying to inject AI could be problematic. What they are trying to do is find a way to add more convenience to you spending your money. If you don't have to stop and think about it for 5 seconds, you are more likely to buy buy buy. I purposely make sure I don't have one-click purchasing and don't use apps where I just bonk the mobe to pay for something. Most small purchases I make with cash. If I've burned through the allocation of cash on hand, no more purchases without a damn good reason. I don't want to find that some "personal assistant" has gone out and spent my money for me.
"for example...."
"...For example, a music fan could tell an agent to buy concert tickets that go on sale at midnight and then go to sleep, knowing that the agent would buy the number and location of tickets they had asked for (presumably with a price limit)."
Oh neat, now scalpers won't even have to run their own scalping software on ticket sites, an AI can do it for them while they sleep!
Christ alive.
Steven R
A lot of people are going to pay to find out about natural language ambiguity…
Let’s have Grandma for dinner…
Obviously, there are a million problems here, it is hard to know where to start.
What kind of person wants to live like this? Who has this little preference about their life? Lets look at some of the examples here:
"Find me new white running shoes"?
"Book me a round-trip flight and a hotel in Palm Springs for the first weekend of November, with a total budget of $700."?
Who has ever uttered a sentence like this? What kind of a person cares that little about the things they are buying to allow a computer to make these decisions unsupervised? For things most people care this little about, Amazon lets you buy stuff in a couple clicks anyway.
Even if I would never touch this, they want to make my life worse. The thing about concert tickets is just... hell. I am already fighting bots every time I want a pass to a national park, a ticket to a concert or a limited release item. Now we want to just automate bot purchases for everyone and remove the low bar that was actually there to automation. This is a threat: engage with our ecosystem, or get left out.
""Book me a round-trip flight and a hotel in Palm Springs for the first weekend of November, with a total budget of $700."?"
You might find you are booked on a flight with a 5 hour layover in BFE and have a room technically in Palm Springs but actually 5 miles from downtown and have to bring your own bedding as well and share with 5 other people.
"This is a threat: engage with our ecosystem, or get left out."
I've opted out. If there's a band or performer I'd like to see and it's a Live Nation/Ticket Master event, I stay home. If there are so many fees that it double the face value of the ticket, no deal. If I can't pay with cash for many things such as parking or drinks, I'm out as well. I have to look carefully for things such as trade shows if parking and other things are card only. I've been burnt before and while I've been able to get things straightened out again, it takes time and during the interval, that money isn't in my account and I don't have a working card for the things I do use it for. It really sucks when that happens in the middle of a trip. I could get mugged for my cash on hand, but I can get more quickly.
The banks always say
Never share your card information with anyone else or give them your pin number, yet you would be doing this with a so called AI agent?
Who is to blame when it buys the wrong thing or at an inflated priced etc? Will the banks just shrug and say "tough shit" you shared your card details?
Re: The banks always say
Yes, yes they will. Because this protocol does "cryptographic signing" (big words) and "capturing intent" (more big words).
So yes, they will say "your intent was captured, and cryptographically signed, it was YOU who did this and we have the signatures to prove it, go pound sand".
Re: The banks always say
pin number
Ahh! No.
PIN, personal identity number. Not personal identity number number.
That would be otiose, redundant and repetitious.
A personal hate of mine.
Re: The banks always say
What's wrong with it? I use my PIN number at the ATM machine all the time!
The woods are calling.
Every day I come closer to donning my tinfoil hat full-time and I've been keeping my eye on the local hollowed-out-stump real estate market.
Re: The woods are calling.
I let my AI agent buy my tinfoil hats to reduce my online footprint.
No.
Just no.
Nothing else needs to be said.