A Guide to the New, Wide World of Agentic Advertising and Commerce Protocols

Mastercard Agent Pay

Announced in April of 2025, Mastercard Agent Pay acts as a payments and trust protocol, similar to AP2, TAP, and x402. ith Agent Pay, Mastercard swapped a user’s card with a unique token assigned for an approved agentic interaction. Then, the system proves to the merchant that a real user authorized an action and that the agent followed the instructions it was given. Users remain in control, setting their own permissions and spending limits, helping to keep agents in line with authorized decisions only. The company is working with leading financial institutions like Citi, U.S. Bank, and other global organizations to make the tech more widely available, and in mid-2025, teamed up with Google to use UCP as the underlying common language for agentic commerce.

Agentic Merchant Protocol (AMP)

Introduced in March by agentic commerce platform Azoma, ACP is an enterprise-focused merchant protocol that offers a centralized system that brands and retailers can use to easily establish how their product catalogues are understood and acted upon by AI agents. The idea is that while platform-tailored standards like OpenAI’s ACP and Google’s UCP enable seamless agentic transactions, but don’t give brands control over how their products are represented or evaluated. It’s possible, in theory at least, that systems like ACP and UCP incorrectly score product data or even get product information wrong. AMP, which isn’t meant to replace those standards but work in collaboration with them, was created to act more as a brand governance layer, letting merchants establish a central source of truth about their products to then feed into other protocols. 

Early adopters of AMP include Mars, Unilever, Reckitt, and L’Oréal.