American Express has introduced a framework it says addresses security and authorization challenges associated with AI agents making purchases on behalf of consumers.
The company’s Intent Intelligence framework establishes a process for capturing, authenticating and preserving a customer’s purchasing instructions throughout an AI-initiated transaction. The approach is intended to help payment issuers verify that purchases made by autonomous agents comply with customer-authorized parameters.
As agentic commerce develops, AI systems increasingly may execute transactions without direct human involvement at checkout. This creates challenges for payment providers seeking to distinguish legitimate purchases from unauthorized activity.
American Express says its framework makes customer authorization information available to issuers before an AI agent completes a purchase.
“Providing authorized purchase intent before an agent transacts can give issuers greater confidence that an agent is acting as a customer intended, while also helping issuers proactively manage risk and reduce the chance of costly disputes across the payments ecosystem,” said Luke Gebb, head of global innovation at American Express.
The framework uses APIs to capture purchasing constraints, including merchant preferences and spending limits. Customers authenticate and approve those instructions, generating identifiers and tokens that can be used to validate subsequent transactions.
Intent Intelligence is available through the American Express Agentic Commerce Experiences Developer Kit.