Google, Mastercard Hand AI Payment Standards to FIDO Alliance

Google and Mastercard submitted their AI payment systems to the FIDO Alliance on April 28 to help build shared industry standards.

Visa, PayPal, American Express, and OpenAI joined the same effort, working together to define how AI agents can securely make purchases on behalf of users.

The FIDO (Fast IDentity Online) Alliance is an industry group that sets authentication standards, replacing passwords with biometrics and device-based verification.

The group creates shared rules for secure AI-led transactions, reducing fragmentation and enabling agent-based payments to scale across platforms.

Backing from major payment companies puts these standards behind agentic commerce, a market projected to reach $5 trillion globally by 2030.

Once these standards are in place, they will be able to complete purchases directly.

"AI agents are quickly becoming part of how people get things done online, from making purchases to managing everyday tasks," Andrew Shikiar, FIDO Alliance executive director and CEO, said in a press statement.

"To scale this safely, people need to trust that these actions are secure, authorized, and truly reflect their intent," he added.

The move builds on Visa's AI-triggered payment initiative and a broader industry push toward agentic AI in commerce workflows.

But it also means that brands without machine-readable data are excluded from the transaction.

Brands must now treat structured product data, pricing, and inventory access as core inputs for AI agents to find and select their products.

What Did Google and Mastercard Contribute?

Google donated AP2, its Agent Payments Protocol, to the FIDO Alliance, covering how AI agents are authorized, what they're allowed to do, and how transactions are executed.

Mastercard added Verifiable Intent, which records exactly what a user approved an agent to do before a payment is completed.

These systems define what agents can do and how their actions are verified before a payment is made.

Traditional authentication asks, "Are you the cardholder?"

Meanwhile, agentic authentication asks, "Is this agent authorized by the cardholder, and within what limits?"

This shows that payments are no longer just about verifying identity, but about defining and enforcing what an AI agent is allowed to do on a user’s behalf.

"For agent-initiated commerce to scale, user intent must be explicit, verifiable, and trusted," Mastercard Chief Digital Officer Pablo Fourez pointed out.

Without shared standards, each platform would define its own rules for agent behavior and transaction approval.

This limits where agents can transact and slows adoption across systems.

The FIDO-led standards address this by aligning how agent actions are authorized and verified across platforms.

Who Is Building the Standards?

The FIDO Alliance formed two working groups to move the work forward.

The Agentic Authentication Technical Working Group is chaired by CVS Health, Google, and OpenAI, with Amazon and Okta as vice-chairs.

It focuses on how users delegate actions to AI agents with phishing-resistant authentication.

The Payments Technical Working Group is chaired by Mastercard and Visa.

It develops specifications for agent-initiated commerce using AP2 and Verifiable Intent as its foundation.

PayPal, American Express, 1Password, LastPass, and Dashlane are also participating in this group.

Mastercard already completed agent-led business transactions across Australia and New Zealand in April 2026.

"Contributing AP2 to the FIDO Alliance ensures it stays open, platform-agnostic, and community-led," Stavan Parikh, VP and GM of Payments at Google, stated.

Here is what the initiative signals for brands and marketers.

• Authentication now covers AI agents. Brands should prepare for transactions initiated by agents acting within defined parameters.
• Open standards reduce fragmentation. Marketers should favor platforms aligned with FIDO-based frameworks over proprietary solutions.
• Visibility must extend to machine buyers. Teams should audit whether product data, pricing, and content are structured for AI agent consumption.

The brands that build for machine buyers now will not have to retrofit when the standards go live.

Our Take: Does This Change How Brands Think About eCommerce?

We think brands must now plan for transactions they don't directly influence, where AI agents select products based on structured inputs.

Competition may now change toward data quality, pricing logic, and fulfillment reliability.

Incomplete inputs remove brands from consideration, leading to lost transactions.

Teams that treat product catalogs as decision systems will control how agents interpret value and rank options.

We think that adoption will still depend on how quickly platforms enable agent access to inventory and checkout.

But ultimately, this will affect how brands design their eCommerce strategies because buying decisions are moving from persuasion to system-driven selection.

Brands building for the agentic era need agencies that understand both the technology and the strategy.

Find the top agentic AI agencies equipped to work at this level.