--- title: The Agent Can Pay, But Who Gave It Permission? | daily.dev description: As AI agents gain the ability to make purchases autonomously, the real challenge isn't execution — it's authorization. Drawing on Google's Agent Payments... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/the-agent-can-pay-but-who-gave-it-permission--tmux5nn9g twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: The Agent Can Pay, But Who Gave It Permission? | daily.dev og:description: As AI agents gain the ability to make purchases autonomously, the real challenge isn't execution — it's authorization. Drawing on Google's Agent Payments... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/the-agent-can-pay-but-who-gave-it-permission--tmux5nn9g og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/TMuX5nn9G.png og:image:alt: The Agent Can Pay, But Who Gave It Permission? og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # The Agent Can Pay, But Who Gave It Permission? **[Medium](https://daily.dev/sources/medium_js)** · 7 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary As AI agents gain the ability to make purchases autonomously, the real challenge isn't execution — it's authorization. Drawing on Google's Agent Payments Protocol (AP2), Visa Intelligent Commerce, and Mastercard Agent Pay, this piece breaks down the four key constraints that make agent mandates safe: scope (what the agent can buy), threshold (spending limits), policy (standing rules), and escalation (when to hand back to the human). It argues that revocation must be a first-class product feature since protocols don't solve it, that audit logs must be explainable to non-technical users, and that the mandate itself should be treated as a durable, lifecycle-managed product object — not a forgotten checkbox — visible and revocable from a single screen. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Questions this post answers ### What is a mandate in Google's Agent Payments Protocol (AP2)? A mandate is a signed statement of what an AI agent may spend, on what, within which limits, and for how long. AP2 chains three signed credentials: an Intent Mandate capturing what the user authorized, a Cart Mandate binding the exact items and price, and a Payment Mandate that the network sees and clears. _Teams evaluating agentic checkout flows follow protocol breakdowns like this one on daily.dev._ ### Does AP2 handle revoking a payment mandate once it's been signed? No, AP2's own documentation notes that revocation is not solved inside the protocol. A signed mandate is intentionally non-repudiable so no party can deny what was agreed, meaning the signature proves the grant but does not retract it, leaving revocation as a feature product teams must build themselves. _Anyone architecting agent payment consent flows can track gaps like this on daily.dev._ ### What is prompt playback in agentic payment systems? Prompt playback is a field in AP2 that provides a natural-language restatement of what the agent understood the user to want when it made a purchase. It serves as a starting point for explainability in audit logs, though products still need to turn it into something a non-technical user can read at a glance and challenge if incorrect. _Developers designing explainable audit trails for agent purchases can find related design discussions on daily.dev._ ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [AI agents are learning to spend money. 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