Understanding the Agentic Commerce Protocol (ACP)
The Agentic Commerce Protocol (ACP) is an open standard designed by OpenAI and Stripe. It acts as a universal bridge, allowing AI agents (like ChatGPT) to securely discover products, configure carts, and authorize payments directly with a merchant’s backend without the user ever leaving the AI interface.
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User (Buyer)
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AI Agent
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Merchant (ACP Endpoints)
Current Step Info:
Click the “Next Step” button below to visualize how an ACP transaction flows from natural language to order completion.
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Protocol Architecture Break Down
Unlike old web-scraping bots that “read” retail websites, ACP creates a clean machine-to-machine connection structured in three main pillars:
- Discovery Layer (via MCP): The AI Agent uses protocols like the Model Context Protocol (MCP) to read machine-readable product catalogs, verifying stock and real-time pricing dynamically.
- Secure Tokenization: Sensitive financial details remain with regulated payment infrastructure providers (like Stripe). ACP passes a scoped, single-use payment token to the merchant.
- Merchant of Record Control: The merchant retains complete control over fraud checks (via fraud tools like Stripe Radar), tax calculation, compliance, and fulfillment mapping.