Agentic trust protocols compared
Agent payment protocols cover buying. AFSP covers becoming a customer.
Visa's Trusted Agent Protocol, Google's AP2, the Agentic Commerce Protocol and Mastercard Agent Pay help AI agents shop and pay safely. The Agentic Financial Services Protocol (AFSP) covers an earlier moment, which none of them address: an AI agent asking a bank to open an account for a person the bank has never met.
Five protocols, five different moments.
Each protocol answers a different question about trusting an AI agent. The difference that matters most is the moment each one governs, and who does the checking.
| Protocol | Led by | The moment it covers | Who checks the agent | How it is published |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| AFSP | Primitive, founding author. An independent AFSP Foundation is targeted for early 2027. | An AI agent asks a bank or credit union to open a new deposit account for a person, before any credential, OAuth grant or KYC exists. | The receiving bank, using five signed signals: agent provenance, biometric consent, federated referral, financial identity and session integrity. | Public specification, open governance. Essential patent claims licensed on FRAND terms. |
| Visa Trusted Agent Protocol | Visa, with Cloudflare. Announced October 14, 2025. | An agent identifies itself to a merchant's website so the merchant can tell a trusted shopping agent from a bot. | The merchant. | Code on GitHub, under Visa's product terms. |
| Agent Payments Protocol (AP2) | Google, with 60+ payments and technology companies. Announced September 16, 2025. | Proving what a user authorized an agent to pay for, through signed mandates. | Merchants and payment providers, using the signed mandates. | Apache 2.0. Contributed to the FIDO Alliance in April 2026. |
| Agentic Commerce Protocol (ACP) | OpenAI and Stripe. Announced September 29, 2025. | Checkout between an agent and a merchant: cart, payment token and order. | The merchant, which can accept or decline per agent and per transaction. | Apache 2.0. |
| Mastercard Agent Pay | Mastercard. Announced April 29, 2025. | Payments made by agents with Mastercard Agentic Tokens. | Mastercard, which requires agents to be registered and verified. | Commercial program. |
As of October 5, 2026, from each protocol's published materials (listed under Sources below). None of them describes opening an account or onboarding a new customer at a financial institution.
Where AFSP fits
Payment protocols assume the person already has a card or an account. They govern what an agent may buy, and how. Banking standards such as OAuth 2.0, FAPI 2.0, FDX and FIDO also assume a relationship already exists.
AFSP governs the moment before any of that: should this AI agent session proceed to the bank's open banking API layer? It gives the bank one signed Pre-Credential Agent Attestation (PCAA) package, bound to that bank and usable once. The bank decides whether to proceed to its own KYC, ask for more verification or decline. Identity verification, KYC, underwriting and the account decision stay with the bank.
Because they govern different moments, an agent could meet several of these protocols. A payment protocol covers a purchase. AFSP covers whether a bank should begin a relationship at all. For the checks themselves, see Know Your Agent for banks.
Common questions
What is an agentic trust protocol?
A shared set of rules that lets one party verify an AI agent before trusting it: who the agent is, who it acts for, and what that person authorized. Each protocol applies this to a different moment, such as checkout, payment or, in AFSP's case, opening a bank account.
How is AFSP different from Visa's Trusted Agent Protocol?
Visa's Trusted Agent Protocol lets a merchant's website recognize a trusted shopping agent and tell it apart from a bot. AFSP lets a bank or credit union verify an agent, the person it acts for and their presence before the agent starts opening a new account.
Do AP2 or ACP cover opening a bank account?
Their published materials, as of October 2026, describe payment authorization (AP2) and checkout between an agent and a merchant (ACP). Neither describes opening an account or onboarding a new customer at a financial institution.
Can one AI agent use AFSP and a payment protocol?
They answer different questions at different moments, so an agent could meet more than one. A payment protocol governs a purchase; AFSP governs whether an agent session may proceed to a bank's open banking API layer to start a new relationship.
Sources
- AFSP Specification v0.1, Public Review Draft (September 28, 2026)
- Visa introduces Trusted Agent Protocol and its GitHub repository
- Google: announcing the Agent Payments Protocol (AP2) and FIDO Alliance: standards for trusted AI agent interactions
- Agentic Commerce Protocol and Stripe and OpenAI announcement
- Mastercard unveils Agent Pay
Product names belong to their owners. This page describes each protocol from its own published materials and implies no endorsement or partnership.