American Express has introduced a framework to capture and authenticate what a customer wants to buy before an AI agent completes a purchase. Called the Intent Intelligence Framework, it is designed to check whether a transaction matches the customer's instructions.
AI agents can make purchases for users, but they can also make mistakes. Amex said it has not seen an increase in disputes tied to agentic commerce. It is developing the framework as this type of shopping grows and hopes it will become an industry standard.
An API records instructions and generates payment tokens
The framework starts with a Create Intent API. It records the customer's instructions and any limits, such as a merchant name, maximum budget or product preferences. How those details are collected may vary by AI model. Amex VP of Agentic Partnerships and Strategy Hannah Bozian said the framework is intended to support different agentic commerce models.
The customer then verifies their identity and approves the captured intent. The system creates an Intent ID and a Proof of Intent Token containing the customer's high-level constraints. The token is used to obtain a secure digital payment credential for checkout, so the agent uses that credential instead of the customer's card number.
Read nextAmazon introduces priming to build hybrid AI models from pretrained TransformersAmex says the ID and token can also help with fraud prevention and dispute resolution. Bozian gave an example: if a customer asks for white Nike sneakers in size 9 and an agent tries to buy Adidas shoes, Amex could stop the transaction. A record of what a customer authorized, which agent acted and when could also help address fraud involving an agent, she said.
Bozian said agents may eventually make some repeat purchases with less direct customer involvement. For household staples such as paper towels or toilet paper, a customer might set limits on price and size without specifying a brand or merchant. The framework is meant to check those limits during the transaction.
The tool joins Amex's broader developer toolkit
The framework joins Amex's Agentic Commerce Experiences, or ACE Developer Toolkit, launched in April. Amex said it is discussing ACE with partners across the payments ecosystem. ACE also includes agentic tokens containing Amex payment credentials.
In a recent Amex Trendex report, 66% of surveyed U.S. consumers said they were likely to use AI agents to research the best price for a product or service. Another 61% said they were likely to use one for a recommendation over the next 12 months. Amex said it plans to keep developing ACE as the agentic commerce ecosystem evolves.
