The recent partnership between Walmart and OpenAI has ignited a race to determine which company will dominate the emerging field of AI-powered commerce. As chatbots increasingly replace traditional browsers for product discovery, the critical challenge remains enabling these AI agents to securely complete transactions on behalf of users. This fundamental shift in how consumers shop online has triggered what industry observers are calling a standards war in the making, with major tech and financial players vying to establish the dominant protocol for agentic commerce.
Currently, when users ask ChatGPT for product recommendations, they must still manually complete purchases through traditional channels. The missing element is the trust infrastructure that would allow banking institutions and consumers to feel comfortable delegating payment authority to AI systems. This challenge has prompted the emergence of competing AI payment standards from industry giants, each proposing different approaches to secure agent-mediated transactions. The stakes are particularly high given that enterprises need assurance that any contacting agent genuinely represents a customer with purchasing intent.
The Protocol Proliferation Problem
Within a remarkably short timeframe, three distinct agentic commerce protocols have entered the market. Google launched its Agent Pay Protocol (AP2) with heavyweight partners including PayPal, American Express, Mastercard, Salesforce, and ServiceNow. Not to be outdone, OpenAI and Stripe quickly countered with their Agentic Commerce Protocol (ACP), while Visa entered the fray with its Trusted Agent Protocol (TAP).
This rapid standardization push reflects how enterprise innovation has accelerated what traditionally would be a years-long process. The situation mirrors earlier technology standards battles, though the current landscape shows both similarities and differences. As companies race to establish their protocols, the industry faces fragmentation risks that could ultimately slow adoption of agentic commerce technologies.
Technical Approaches and Infrastructure Requirements
While all three protocols aim to solve the authorization problem, they employ different technical methodologies. Both Google’s AP2 and Visa’s TAP rely on cryptographic proofs to demonstrate that an agent is acting on an individual’s behalf. TAP specifically involves adding agents to an approved list and providing them with digital keys for identification.
Google’s AP2 utilizes digital contracts that serve as proxies for human approval, creating a verifiable chain of authorization. Meanwhile, OpenAI’s ACP takes a different approach, requiring minimal infrastructure changes by essentially positioning the agent as an information courier to merchants. This diversity in technical implementation underscores the experimental phase of agentic commerce, with different players betting on distinct architectural philosophies.
The Walled Garden Dilemma
The most significant concern emerging from this standards competition is the potential creation of walled gardens. While ideally these protocols would work across different chat platforms, reality often diverges from ideal scenarios. Enterprises face the genuine risk of becoming locked into platforms and payment standards that don’t interoperate with alternatives.
Louis Amira, CEO of agent commerce startup Circuit and Chisel, captured the industry’s apprehension perfectly: “The better the protocol proposals get, the more likely they are to end up being walled gardens and very hard to interoperate.” This fragmentation challenge creates opportunities for interoperability layer companies while simultaneously confusing enterprise adopters who must navigate competing standards.
Broader Industry Implications
The protocol competition reflects larger trends in technology infrastructure development. Unlike the open internet built on universal standards like TCP/IP, chat platforms have historically operated as separate ecosystems. Users typically remain within their preferred chatbot environment, whether ChatGPT, Gemini, or others, creating natural silos that protocol developers must either bridge or exploit.
The situation has parallels in other technology sectors where competing visions for future infrastructure create temporary market confusion before eventual consolidation. Similarly, the adoption of AI technologies in commerce follows patterns seen in other industries where enterprises increasingly integrate AI systems into their core operations, though payment authorization presents unique security and trust challenges.
The Path Forward for Enterprises
For businesses navigating this complex landscape, the current recommendation is to experiment with multiple protocols while monitoring industry developments. Wayne Liu of Perfect Corp. suggests that “having multiple protocol proposals just means there’s more learning,” emphasizing the importance of open-source approaches in eventually harmonizing different standards.
The ideal outcome would be a unified agentic commerce protocol that incorporates the best features of each proposal. However, the road to standardization may be lengthy, with industry observers predicting several years of competition before clear winners emerge. During this period, companies must balance innovation adoption with strategic flexibility, avoiding overcommitment to any single protocol that might not achieve critical mass.
As the industry watches these developments unfold, the fundamental question remains whether additional major players will enter the standards competition. With significant retailers and chat platforms yet to declare their positions, the current three-protocol landscape could easily expand, creating even greater complexity before eventual consolidation. The resolution of this standards battle will determine not just which companies profit, but how seamlessly AI agents will integrate into our commercial lives, much like how strategic infrastructure decisions in other sectors shape their technological trajectories for decades.
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