"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."
Intent Intelligence begins by recording the instructions a customer gives an AI agent. Those directions can include factors such as the merchant, a maximum spending amount and other preferences or limits. The customer then verifies their identity and approves the captured instructions.
American Express then creates an Intent ID tied to that authorization, along with a Proof of Intent Token representing the main limits attached to the purchase request.
That token can be used to obtain a secure digital payment credential for the AI agent. The agent uses the credential during checkout instead of accessing the customer's actual card number. Because the credential is linked to the approved intent, it can be restricted according to the conditions the customer previously authorized.
The Intent ID and Proof of Intent Token can also remain part of the transaction after checkout begins. American Express says they can help determine whether a payment request matches the customer's instructions and can support fraud controls, authorization decisions and dispute handling.
The framework is intended to work across different forms of agentic commerce rather than requiring one specific method for collecting a user's instructions. The party capturing the intent can vary, while the underlying authorization is preserved as the transaction moves through the payment system.
American Express developed the framework as a core component of ACE. The company says its role as both a card issuer and payment network influenced the design, since it operates across multiple parts of a transaction involving cardholders, merchants, issuers and payment infrastructure.
The company is also developing integrations for the ACE Developer Kit as AI-assisted purchasing expands.
Beyond its own framework, American Express said it is working with industry groups on broader standards for agent-based payments. That includes engagement with EMVCo around card transactions involving AI agents and support for the x402 Foundation's work on internet-native payment standards.
By publishing Intent Intelligence, American Express is focusing on one of the central control questions created by AI shopping agents: how payment systems can distinguish between what a customer actually authorized and what an agent ultimately attempts to buy. Its approach is to make that authorization part of the payment infrastructure before the purchase takes place, rather than relying solely on checks after a transaction has already been initiated.
This analysis is based on reporting from Yahoo Finance courtesy of Business Wire.
Image courtesy of PYMNTS.
This article was generated with AI assistance and reviewed for accuracy and quality.
