Agentic commerce, explained
Agentic commerce is when an AI agent finds, chooses, and pays for goods and services on a person’s behalf. Most coverage is about shopping. Agents also buy services every day: web search, data, scraping, voice, and video, paid per call.
Two kinds of agentic commerce
Shopping
An agent buys a product from a store, often at a checkout inside a chat app. The person approves the purchase or sets a limit first.
Services
An agent pays for the tools its work needs, one call at a time: a search, a page scrape, a voiceover. This is what o11 does, across 8,416 tools.
How agents pay: the protocols
| Protocol | Layer | What it does | From |
|---|---|---|---|
| x402 | Pay per request | Turns an HTTP 402 response into a signed stablecoin payment the server checks before it responds. | x402 Foundation |
| MPP | Pay per request | The same 402 pattern with cards and stablecoins, plus sessions that cap what a client can spend. | Tempo and Stripe |
| ACP | Checkout | Checkout sessions between an agent and a merchant, used for buying inside ChatGPT. | OpenAI and Stripe |
| AP2 | Permission | Signed records of what the person approved, such as a price limit, before an agent buys. | Google and partners |
x402 vs MPP vs ACP vs AP2, in depth · How agents handle HTTP 402
The OpenRouter for agentic commerce
- One wallet and one MCP server reach 8,416 paid tools.
- Each agent gets its own card with an allowance you set.
- The agent sees the price before every call, and every call is logged.
- Most tools need no provider sign-up or API key.
Questions
- What is agentic commerce?
- Agentic commerce is when an AI agent finds, chooses, and pays for something on a person’s behalf. It covers shopping, like buying a product inside ChatGPT, and services, like an agent paying per call for web search, data, or video generation.
- How do AI agents pay for things?
- Three common ways: borrowing a person’s API keys or card, which is risky; paying per request with a protocol like x402 or MPP; or using a wallet that holds funds and enforces spending limits for each agent. o11 is a wallet of the last kind.
- Is agentic commerce safe?
- It is safe when the agent has its own scoped access and a hard spending limit. With o11, each agent gets a card with an allowance, sees the price before a call, and can be revoked at any time. It never holds your card details.
- Do I need crypto to use agentic commerce?
- No. Protocols like x402 settle in stablecoins, but with o11 you fund one wallet and your agent pays per call from it. o11 handles the provider accounts and payment rails.
