Agent Commerce
What is an AI payment agent?
An AI payment agent is an autonomous software system that can initiate, authorize, and execute financial transactions — without requiring human approval for each individual payment.
Unlike payment automations that execute fixed scripts, a payment agent makes contextual decisions: it evaluates whether a transaction is permitted by policy, selects the appropriate rail, and produces a verifiable record of what happened and why.
The key properties
Autonomous execution
The agent initiates and executes payments without per-transaction human input. It acts within a pre-authorized policy envelope — not as a blank check.
Policy governance
Every request is evaluated against a structured policy before any money moves. Spend limits, merchant allowlists, and purpose restrictions constrain what the agent can do.
Verifiable output
Every executed payment produces a cryptographically signed receipt — an Ed25519 signature over a canonicalized payload. This is independently verifiable by any third party.
Audit trail
The authorization decision, policy version, actor identity, and rail confirmation are all recorded as a structured lineage entry — not just a transaction record.
How an agent payment works
From request to verifiable receipt — the full lifecycle.
Agent requests spend
The agent submits a spend request: amount, merchant, currency, rail, purpose tag, and idempotency key. This is the only human-free step — everything else involves evaluation or record-keeping.
Policy evaluates the request
The payment policy engine checks the request against the agent's policy: spend limits, merchant allowlist, rail restrictions, purpose tags, and time-based rules. Returns authorized, blocked, or needs_review.
Human review (if required)
If the policy returns needs_review, the payment is held. A notification goes to the designated reviewer. No money moves until a human explicitly approves or rejects.
Payment executes on the rail
Authorized payments are dispatched to the configured rail — Stripe for Phase 1, USDC on Base and ETH rails in Phase 2. The rail confirmation is recorded.
Signed receipt issued
Agent Commerce issues an Ed25519-signed payment receipt over the canonical payload. The receipt hash is recorded in the transparency log. This is the verifiable proof of what happened.
Independent verification available
Any party with the receipt ID can verify hash integrity and signature against CertifiedData's published public key at /.well-known/certifieddata-public-key.pem — no account required.
Why verifiability matters
Traditional payment systems answer one question: did money move? That is not enough for autonomous systems.
When an AI agent spends money, you need to be able to answer: What was authorized? What actually executed? What policy governed the decision? Can this be verified by someone who does not trust the platform that processed it?
Agent Commerce's verifiable payment model answers all four questions — not just the first.
Frequently asked questions
What is an AI payment agent?
An AI payment agent is an autonomous software system that can initiate, authorize, and execute financial transactions on behalf of a user, organization, or another system — without requiring human approval for each individual payment. The agent operates within a defined policy envelope that controls what it can spend, with whom, and under what conditions.
How is an AI payment agent different from a payment bot or automation?
A payment bot executes a fixed sequence of steps. An AI payment agent makes contextual decisions: it evaluates whether a payment is permitted by policy, selects the appropriate rail, and produces a verifiable record of what happened and why. The key distinction is policy evaluation and verifiable output — not just execution.
Does an AI payment agent need human approval?
It depends on the policy. Agent Commerce's payment policy engine produces three outcomes: authorized (the agent executes autonomously), blocked (the payment is rejected), and needs_review (the payment is held for a human to approve before execution). High-value or anomalous transactions can be configured to always require human review.
What makes an AI agent payment verifiable?
Every agent payment on Agent Commerce produces an Ed25519-signed receipt over an RFC 8785-canonicalized payload. The receipt includes the payment amount, merchant, rail, authorization decision, policy version, and a unique receipt ID. Any third party can verify this receipt against CertifiedData's published public key — without an account.
What is the difference between an AI payment agent and a traditional payment API?
A traditional payment API executes payments when called by a human-controlled system. An AI payment agent calls the payment API autonomously, evaluates policy before doing so, and produces a structured audit record. The agent introduces autonomous decision-making and accountability into the payment flow.
Start building with Agent Commerce
Policy-governed, receipt-issued, independently verifiable payments for autonomous AI agents.