Personal AI agents are increasingly making transactions on users’ behalf, but large language models’ nondeterministic nature makes AI bots prone to doing things they’re not supposed to. That raises the possibility of an AI misfire leading to an unauthorized transaction.
American Express is introducing a framework that captures and authenticates a customer’s purchase intent before an AI agent completes a transaction. Amex says those instructions should stay attached to the transaction from the purchase through everything that follows.
Amex hopes its “Intent Intelligence Framework” will become an industry standard for AI-powered transactions. The framework joins the handful of services in Agentic Commerce Experiences, or the ACE Developer Toolkit, which Amex launched in April.
Amex said it has not yet seen an increase in disputes because of agentic commerce, but is preparing for the technology’s wider use.
Consumers have signaled they’re open to it. In a recent Amex Trendex report, 66% of surveyed U.S. consumers said they were likely to use AI agents to research the best price for a product or service. Another 61% said they were likely to use an agent for a product or service recommendation over the next 12 months. Amex reported both figures to TechCrunch.
Amex’s process starts with a Create Intent API, which captures the customer’s purchase instructions and any other constraints included in the request, such as the merchant’s name, maximum budget, and product preferences. How the intent is collected may vary depending on the AI model involved, but Amex plans to make the framework flexible enough to support all agentic commerce models, Bozian told TechCrunch. The customer then confirms their identity and approves the intent the agent recorded.
After approval, the system creates an Intent ID, a unique identifier representing the intent, and a Proof of Intent Token containing the customer’s high-level constraints. The token lets the agent obtain a secure digital payment credential for checkout rather than use the customer’s actual credit card number. Amex says this keeps the purchase secure and aligned with what the customer authorized the agent to do. The Intent ID and token can also be used at different stages of the transaction process to help companies manage fraud prevention and dispute resolution, Amex said.
“These new transactions will have a consumer, a merchant, and an agent,” Bozian said in an interview with TechCrunch. She said Amex wants them to remain “seamless, trusted, and secure, the way our card members expect them to.” She also said Amex brings purchase intent into the transaction earlier than other implementations, which can help reduce risk before it occurs.
As an example, Bozian described a customer asking an agent for white Nike sneakers in size 9, while the agent submits an order for Adidas shoes. Amex could stop the purchase because the agent made a mistake.
Although many agents still ask customers to approve purchases, Bozian said some may become more autonomous. A customer, for instance, might let an agent reorder household staples such as paper towels or toilet paper, where the only real constraints may be price and size, not merchant or brand. Bozian said an extra technology check could help ensure those orders match the customer’s intent. A log of what was authorized, by which agent, and when could also help address fraud on behalf of the agent.
Amex is already in discussions with partners across the payments ecosystem about implementing ACE. The toolkit includes agentic tokens containing Amex’s payment credentials, along with other developer-kit components. Amex plans to actively develop ACE as agentic commerce evolves.
