Google vs. OpenAI vs. Visa: competing agent protocols threaten the future of AI commerce

AI agents, as of now, don’t have the ability or the trust infrastructure to make people and banking institutions feel safe enough to let it loose on someone’s cash. And so, over the past few weeks, three competing agentic commerce standards have emerged: Google announced the Agent Pay Protocol (AP2) with partners including PayPal, American Express, Mastercard, Salesforce and ServiceNow. Soon after, OpenAI and Stripe debuted the Agentic Commerce Protocol (ACP), and just this week, Visa launched the Trusted Agent Protocol (TAP).