Stripe Agentic Commerce: The Agentic Commerce Protocol, the Agentic Commerce Suite and Shared Payment Tokens

Short answer: "Stripe agentic commerce" means two things. One is the Agentic Commerce Protocol (ACP), an open standard Stripe released with OpenAI on September 29, 2025 that defines how an AI agent creates a checkout with a business and passes a payment token. The other is what Stripe sells on top of it: the Agentic Commerce Suite, which takes your catalog, shares it with AI agents, runs checkout and charges the buyer through Shared Payment Tokens. If you sell on Shopify, you don't need either; Shopify connects you to ChatGPT and Google itself. If you run a custom stack on Stripe and want agents to sell your products, the Suite is the shortest documented route, with preview-stage terms.

This guide is for merchants and agencies trying to work out whether Stripe's agentic tools apply to them. Every claim comes from Stripe's docs, newsroom and legal terms, OpenAI's developer docs and posts, the ACP GitHub repository, Google and Shopify, listed under Sources. We read openai.com and chatgpt.com through a text reader (r.jina.ai) because they refuse direct fetches. Where a source is silent, we say "not documented". For how ACP fits next to the other AI channels, start with the AI shopping channels guide.

Agentic Commerce Protocol (ACP)

An open standard, licensed under Apache 2.0, for how AI agents, buyers and businesses complete purchases through APIs. Released by OpenAI and Stripe on September 29, 2025; Meta joined as a lead maintainer on April 24, 2026. It defines agentic checkout, cart and product feeds, delegated payment, delegated authentication, and order webhooks. The spec is labeled beta.

Agentic Commerce Suite

Stripe's product for selling through AI agents, launched December 11, 2025. A seller shares a catalog feed with Stripe; Stripe syndicates products to connected agents, manages the checkout, processes the payment and sends the seller an order event. Each stage can be taken over by the seller. Stripe describes it as working across protocols, including ACP and Google's UCP.

Shared Payment Token (SPT)

A Stripe payment credential an AI agent grants to a seller: a scoped, limited reference to the buyer's payment method, tied to the seller's Stripe profile with a maximum amount and an expiry. The seller charges it like a card and never sees the card number. OpenAI's docs call it the first implementation of OpenAI's Delegated Payment Spec.

What is the Agentic Commerce Protocol, and who maintains it?

ACP launched alongside ChatGPT's Instant Checkout. Stripe's September 29, 2025 announcement called it a merchant-friendly open standard codeveloped by Stripe and OpenAI, and said businesses not processing with Stripe can adopt it with their existing payment providers. That second point still matters: ACP is a protocol, not a Stripe product, even though Stripe was the first payment provider to support it.

The repository is the most precise source on governance. Its README says the specification is maintained by OpenAI and Stripe as founding maintainers, is in beta, and aims for neutral foundation stewardship as the ecosystem matures. The maintainers file has listed Meta as a third lead maintainer since a commit dated April 24, 2026, and Stripe's ACP docs now describe the protocol as created by Stripe, OpenAI and Meta. Major changes go through "SEP" enhancement proposals, and contributors sign a contributor license agreement.

ACP is versioned by date. Five releases have shipped: September 29, 2025 (initial), December 12, 2025 (fulfillment), January 16, 2026 (capability negotiation), January 30, 2026 (extensions, discounts and payment handlers) and April 17, 2026 (cart, feed, orders, authentication and MCP). The April release added a Feed API in which merchants push catalog data to an agent-hosted feed, the model ChatGPT now uses for discovery. Stripe's docs list the building blocks:

• Agentic checkout: create, update and complete checkout sessions, with cart, fulfillment options and payment.
• Cart and feed: browse product catalogs and manage carts before checkout.
• Delegate payment: pass payment tokens between buyer, agent and business through payment handlers.
• Delegate authentication: OAuth 2.0, so an agent can act for a buyer with a business.
• Orders and webhooks: lifecycle updates for confirmation, shipping, delivery and refunds.

Three companies have documented ACP implementations. OpenAI was the first AI platform, with ChatGPT. Stripe was the first compatible payment provider, through Shared Payment Tokens. And Stripe's March 24, 2026 announcement of a one-click checkout inside Facebook ads says ACP underpins that flow, with Instagram ads to follow; no timeline was given.

How does an ACP purchase work?

OpenAI's key-concepts guide describes the flow from the agent's side, and the merchant keeps control of every money step. OpenAI states plainly that it is not the merchant of record under ACP.

1. 01

   The agent opens a checkout session

   When the buyer picks a product, the agent calls the merchant's ACP checkout endpoint with the items and the buyer's shipping details.

2. 02

   The merchant returns totals

   The merchant validates the cart, works out fulfillment options and tax, and returns the totals the agent shows the buyer.

3. 03

   The buyer confirms and the agent passes a token

   Under the Delegated Payment Spec, the agent's payment provider issues a one-time token capped at the purchase amount with an expiry. Stripe's Shared Payment Token is that token when Stripe is the provider.

4. 04

   The merchant charges and decides

   The merchant charges the token with its own processor, runs its own risk checks, and accepts or declines the order.

5. 05

   Order updates flow back

   Webhooks carry confirmation, shipping and refund status to the agent so it can answer the buyer.

The point for merchants: an agent never holds your customer's card and never takes title to the goods. Refunds, disputes and the customer relationship stay with you, the same as any card-not-present order.

What does Stripe actually ship for agentic commerce?

For sellers, one product with a few parts. Stripe launched the Agentic Commerce Suite on December 11, 2025 with a waitlist, naming Coach, Kate Spade, URBN, Revolve, Ashley Furniture, Halara, Abt Electronics and Nectar as early businesses, and Wix, WooCommerce, BigCommerce, Squarespace, commercetools and Etsy as platforms bringing it to their merchants. The launch post said the merchant remains the merchant of record.

Stripe's current guide to selling through agents no longer mentions a waitlist. It describes onboarding from the Agentic commerce page in the Stripe Dashboard and lists what you need: a Stripe account with a Stripe profile carrying your terms of service, privacy policy and return policy; a product catalog you can export as a CSV feed; tax codes for taxable products; and a way to fulfill orders, such as a webhook endpoint. It says the Suite is available in the US, Canada and select European countries.

Two operational rules in Stripe's guide are worth copying even if you never use Stripe. Upload full product data once a day and inventory and pricing every 15 minutes, because a price mismatch between feed and checkout makes the checkout fail. And delete discontinued products explicitly; in upsert mode, a product missing from the feed stays live to agents.

Connecting to an agent is a two-sided approval. You review an agent's terms in the Dashboard and click Request connection; the agent has to accept before its status shows Enabled. Orders then appear in your Transactions page tagged with the agent's name. Which agents appear in that list is not documented in Stripe's public docs, which refer only to "agents" you connect.

Stripe has announced channel partnerships separately. Microsoft named Stripe, with PayPal and Shopify, as a Copilot Checkout activation partner on January 8, 2026, and took applications from merchants onboarding through Stripe. Facebook ads checkout followed on March 24, 2026. At Sessions on April 29, 2026, Stripe said a partnership with Google would let businesses sell inside AI Mode and the Gemini app, described as coming "soon". We found no Stripe or Google page dating the Google launch since.

What are Shared Payment Tokens, and how do sellers use them?

An SPT is a scoped grant to use a buyer's payment method. Stripe's seller documentation says the agent grants it to your Stripe profile with usage limits: a currency, a maximum amount (the agent sets it to the transaction total) and an expiry. You charge it by creating a PaymentIntent with the token, and Stripe clones the buyer's payment method so refunds and reporting work as normal. Recurring use needs a token issued with a recurring interval.

• Single use by default. Stripe's terms forbid using an SPT for more than one authorization unless the docs allow it, or after it expires or is revoked.
• Works with other processors. A Resolve API returns network credentials (a card number, a network token or an agentic token) to send to your own processor. You can resolve each token once, and PCI scope rules apply.
• Network programs underneath. Stripe says it may use tokens from Mastercard Agent Pay, Visa Intelligent Commerce and the American Express ACE Kit on your behalf.
• Deactivation events. A webhook fires when a token is consumed, resolved, expired or revoked by the agent.
• Countries. Stripe lists the US, Canada, the UK, Switzerland, Gibraltar and every European Economic Area country except Iceland.

On OpenAI's side, the Delegated Payment Spec says the agent prepares a one-time payment request with a maximum chargeable amount and an expiry, and the payment provider returns the token. OpenAI's docs name Stripe's SPT as the first compatible implementation, "with more PSPs coming soon". We haven't found a second provider named on OpenAI's pages.

What does Stripe agentic commerce cost?

There's no separate Suite fee on Stripe's pricing page. The seller terms say agentic transactions carry the fees on the Stripe Pricing Page or otherwise agreed in writing, plus the fees for any other Stripe services used, naming Payments and Radar. Stripe's standard US card rate on that page is 2.9% plus 30 cents per successful transaction.

• SPT issuance: Stripe's pricing page lists Shared Payment Tokens at $0.15 per SPT issued, linked to the agent-side docs. It doesn't say whether that cost ever reaches the seller.
• AI platform fees: the same terms say that if an agent's operator directs it, Stripe may deduct fees you owe that operator from your transactions and pass them on. Whether a given agent charges a fee is set by that agent's own terms, which you review before requesting a connection.
• Your own costs: feed engineering, tax configuration and fulfillment integration, plus Stripe Tax if you use it.

How does ACP relate to ChatGPT shopping now that Instant Checkout has ended?

ACP was built for in-chat checkout, and ChatGPT has stepped back from it. On March 24, 2026, OpenAI said the first version of Instant Checkout didn't offer the flexibility it wanted, let merchants use their own checkout, and extended ACP to product discovery. It named Stripe and Salesforce as third-party providers merchants can use to send product feeds and promotions. OpenAI's merchant page now says purchases are completed on merchant-owned websites or apps, with no fees on those purchases.

Two details stop this from being a clean ending. OpenAI's shopping help page still says that for some eligible products and merchants ChatGPT may show an Instant Checkout option. And OpenAI still publishes the Agentic Checkout Spec and Delegated Payment Spec. The full timeline is in our explainer on how buying inside ChatGPT works after Instant Checkout.

In practice, ACP's live job in ChatGPT is the product feed. OpenAI's get-started guide says feed onboarding is open to approved partners who apply through chatgpt.com/merchants, and the merchant page says applicants join a waitlist while Shopify and Etsy catalogs need no application. The field-by-field version is our walk-through of OpenAI's product feed spec. If someone sells you an ACP checkout build so ChatGPT can take orders, ask what OpenAI has confirmed for your account.

How does ACP compare with Google's UCP and AP2?

They overlap less than the acronyms suggest. ACP and UCP are both commerce protocols covering catalog, checkout and orders; AP2 is a payment-authorization protocol that UCP uses underneath. Our Universal Commerce Protocol guide covers UCP checkout in AI Mode and Gemini in depth, so this table sticks to how the three differ.

The overlap is in the people, not the specs. Stripe and Meta maintain ACP and sit on UCP's Shopping Tech Council; Stripe's docs call it a member of the UCP Tech Council and its Suite advertises support for both protocols from one integration. For a merchant, that's the practical answer to "which protocol wins": if your payment provider or platform speaks both, you don't have to pick.

For a plainer overview of all four acronyms, including MCP, see our agentic commerce protocols decoder.

What do Shopify merchants need to do about ACP and Stripe?

Nothing protocol-related. Shopify's Selling on ChatGPT page says you don't need to do anything for products to be discovered by ChatGPT through Shopify Catalog, that customers check out on your online store checkout, and that there are no fees beyond standard payment processing. It doesn't mention ACP or Stripe. OpenAI's help page says the same from its side: Shopify product data is already integrated through Shopify Catalog, with no additional work from individual merchants.

Shopify's own agent tooling runs on the other protocol. Its developer docs say Shopify's Catalog, Cart and Checkout MCP tools implement UCP at every step of the buyer journey, and its Spring '26 Edition turned UCP on by default for merchants. Stripe's Suite launch materials name Wix, WooCommerce, BigCommerce, Squarespace and commercetools as platforms, not Shopify.

What a Shopify store does need is the store-level eligibility the channels check: Catalog-eligible products, the Agentic Storefronts Supplemental Terms, completed terms, privacy and refund policies, and US selling. If you want AI channels without a Shopify storefront, the Shopify Agentic plan is the Shopify-side route.

What do custom-stack merchants need?

A decision about which channels matter, then the shortest path to each. Stripe's Suite is attractive if you already process with Stripe, because one catalog feed reaches every agent you connect and Stripe handles the checkout protocol. If you don't, the protocols are open and you can implement them with your own provider.

1. 01

   Pick the channels

   ChatGPT wants a product feed (ACP, approved partners only). Google AI Mode and Gemini want Merchant Center plus a UCP checkout. Copilot Checkout takes applications through PayPal or Stripe. Each has its own gate.

2. 02

   Fix the catalog first

   Every route reads the same fields: titles, variants, GTINs, price, availability, shipping and returns. Stripe's feed fails checkouts on stale prices, and so does everyone else's.

3. 03

   Choose who runs checkout

   Stripe-managed checkout needs the fewest changes. Your own UCP checkout with Stripe as payment handler suits teams that already built one. Handling every checkout event yourself is private preview in the US.

4. 04

   Set up your Stripe profile and policies

   Agents issue tokens to your Stripe profile ID, and the profile carries your terms, privacy and return policies. Configure tax codes before you go live; incomplete tax setup fails checkouts.

5. 05

   Connect agents one at a time

   Request each connection, read that agent's terms for fees, test in a sandbox with the SPT test helper, then go live and watch the agent-tagged orders.

What should you do this quarter?

• If you're on Shopify: check eligibility and catalog quality, and ignore ACP pitches. The Instant Checkout explainer has the one-line version to give clients.
• If you're on Stripe with a custom stack: read Stripe's selling guide, set up your Stripe profile and a 15-minute inventory and price feed, and test one agent connection in a sandbox before committing a roadmap to it.
• If you're an agency: separate the three questions every client conflates. Which channel? Which protocol does the channel use? Who on the client's stack already speaks it?
• Everyone: keep price and availability identical across feed and checkout. Stripe's docs list price mismatch as a cause of failed agent checkouts, and every channel ranks on the same data.

To have feeds, channel settings and catalog data set up across ChatGPT, Copilot and Google, see Agentic Commerce Setup.