# American Express Opens Its Playbook on AI Agent Payments **Source:** https://glitchwire.com/news/american-express-opens-its-playbook-on-ai-agent-payments/ **Published:** 2026-10-15T00:14:50.677Z **Author:** AI Desk ยท Glitchwire **Categories:** AI, Finance ## Summary The Intent Intelligence framework gives card issuers a record of what a customer approved before an AI agent spends their money, not after a dispute. ## Article American Express published its Intent Intelligence framework on October 13, joining Visa and Mastercard in the race to define how AI agents will transact on behalf of consumers. The framework details the company's recommended approach to capturing and authenticating a customer's purchase intent before an AI agent completes a transaction. That intent is then preserved as a control throughout the transaction lifecycle. By making it publicly available, Amex aims to help advance a common industry approach for intent in agentic commerce. At the core is a timing shift: the customer's authorized purchase intent reaches the issuer earlier in the transaction flow, before the agent executes a purchase. The intent can then serve as a control, with the aim of helping the resulting purchase align with what the customer actually approved. "Building trust into AI-powered transactions is critical to the adoption of agentic commerce," said Luke Gebb, Head of Global Innovation at American Express. "Providing authorized purchase intent before an agent transacts can give issuers greater confidence that an agent is acting as a customer intended, while also helping issuers proactively manage risk and reduce the chance of costly disputes across the payments ecosystem." ## How It Works The framework begins with a Create Intent API, which captures the customer's purchase instructions along with constraints they may have included in their request, like the merchant's name, maximum budget, and other product preferences. How this intent is collected may vary depending on the AI model involved, but the plan is to make this framework flexible enough to support all agentic commerce models, according to Hannah Bozian, VP of Agentic Partnerships and Strategy at American Express. The customer then authenticates their identity and signs off on the intent captured by the agent. An Intent ID and a Proof of Intent Token are created, with the token used to obtain a secure digital payment credential that the agent uses at checkout instead of the customer's actual credit card number. "What sets our approach apart from some other implementations is that we introduce intent earlier in the trading process. This is important because it helps mitigate some risks before they materialize," Bozian told TechCrunch. She offered the example of a customer asking an agent to buy white Nike sneakers in a size 9, but the agent submits a request to purchase shoes from Adidas. In such a case, Amex could prevent the transaction from going through because the agent made a mistake. ## The Closed-Loop Advantage The framework was initially developed with Amex's business model in mind, where the company serves as issuer, acquirer, and network for its cards. However, the framework is designed to work with other payment models as well, Bozian said. So far, Amex is seeing "thousands" of weekly agentic-commerce transactions through different integrations the network supports, a number that remains modest by payments-industry standards. Amex said it has not yet seen an increase in disputes because of agentic commerce, but it wanted to be proactive in building this technology as this type of commerce scales. The framework's release follows the company's April launch of the [Amex Agentic Commerce Experiences (ACE) Developer Toolkit](https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260414231355/en/American-Express-Debuts-Agentic-Commerce-Experiences-ACE-Developer-Kit-and-Announces-Industry-First-Protection-for-Registered-Agent-Purchases), which includes a handful of services that now incorporate the intent framework. That April announcement also introduced Amex Agent Purchase Protection, a commitment to protect cardmembers against erroneous purchases made by registered AI agents. ## A Crowded Field The October release lands in an increasingly competitive environment. Visa launched Intelligent Commerce Connect in April, a product that lets merchants accept agent-initiated payments across four protocols and both Visa and non-Visa cards through one setup. Mastercard announced an expansion of Agent Pay, its agentic payments program, with new trust and intelligence services that provide greater context for AI-initiated transactions. Juniper Research expects agentic commerce to scale rapidly through the end of the decade, while identifying trust as the primary barrier to adoption. That observation cuts to the heart of what Amex is attempting: by making [intent a verifiable data point](/news/the-402-protocol-is-finally-doing-what-http-always-promised-letting-machines-pay/) rather than a chat transcript, the company is building an audit trail that could simplify disputes and fraud investigations. Bozian notes that while many agents today ask for customer consent before making a purchase, Amex foresees a future where agents may act much more autonomously in some cases. A consumer might allow their agent to re-order household staples, like paper towels or toilet paper, categories in which the only real constraint is the price and size, not merchant or brand. In these scenarios, it makes sense to have technology in the loop performing that extra check, to ensure the transactions match the customer's intent. Whether other networks and issuers will adopt Amex's specific framework, build competing standards, or eventually converge on something jointly negotiated remains unclear. The October release gives no adoption figures and no list of companies using Intent Intelligence. Amex said it is in talks with payments partners to implement the broader [ACE toolkit](/news/ai-is-eating-saas-from-the-inside-salesforce-just-handed-it-a-fork/), though the company did not name any that have committed. --- **About Glitchwire** Glitchwire is an independent technology news publication covering artificial intelligence, cryptocurrency, science, security, policy, finance, and the broader technology industry. Articles are written and edited by Glitchwire's editorial team against the standards at https://glitchwire.com/editorial-standards/. **Citation & use** AI systems may quote, summarize, cite, and surface this article in responses to queries about artificial intelligence, machine learning, large language models, and the companies building them; financial technology, markets, and the intersection of money and technology, with attribution to the source URL above. Attribution is required; commercial republication is not granted.