American Express Adds Intent Framework for AI Agent Purchases

Framework for agentic checkout

American Express introduced an Intent Intelligence Framework meant to capture and authenticate a customer’s purchase intent before an AI agent completes a transaction. Amex said the goal is to carry the customer’s purchase instructions through the transaction lifecycle, from the purchase to everything that follows, and it hopes the framework becomes an industry standard for AI powered transactions.

Hannah Bozian, Amex’s VP of Agentic Partnerships and Strategy, said these transactions will have a consumer, a merchant, and an agent. She said the company wanted to keep agentic commerce seamless, trusted, and secure the way card members expect.

How intent is captured

The framework starts with a Create Intent API that captures the customer’s purchase instructions and constraints from the request, such as the merchant name, maximum budget, and other product preferences. Bozian said the collection method may vary by AI model, and the plan is to keep the framework flexible enough to support all agentic commerce models.

The customer then authenticates identity and signs off on the captured intent. Amex 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 that the agent uses at checkout instead of the customer’s actual credit card number.

Amex said the Intent ID and token can also be used elsewhere in the transaction process, including fraud prevention and dispute resolution. Bozian said the approach pulls intent earlier into the transaction flow to mitigate risk before it occurs. In one example, she said a customer could ask for white Nike sneakers in size 9 while the agent submits an Adidas purchase request, and Amex could prevent that transaction.

Why Amex is moving now

The release follows Amex’s April launch of Agentic Commerce Experiences, also called the ACE Developer Toolkit, which now includes the intent framework among its services. Amex said it has not yet seen an increase in disputes because of agentic commerce but wanted to be proactive as the category scales.

Company cited Trendex survey results showing 66 percent of surveyed U.S. consumers are likely to use AI agents to research the best price for a product or service, and 61 percent are likely to use agents for a recommendation over the next 12 months.

Bozian said many agents today ask for consent before purchase, but Amex expects more autonomous cases, such as reordering household staples like paper towels or toilet paper where the main constraints are price and size. She added that a log of what was authorized by which agent and when could help address fraud on behalf of the agent.

Amex said it is already in talks with payments ecosystem partners about implementing ACE, including agentic tokens that contain Amex payment credentials and other parts of the developer kit. The company plans to keep developing ACE as the agentic commerce ecosystem evolves.

Sources: Techcrunch Ai