Agentic Commerce Research

March 31, 2026 · View on GitHub

A living research paper tracking the emerging infrastructure, protocols, players, and regulatory landscape of AI-agent-initiated commerce.

The Paper

Read the full paper → PAPER.md

What This Covers

  • Protocols: Machine Payments Protocol (MPP), Agentic Commerce Protocol (ACP), Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP), x402
  • Players: Stripe/Tempo, OpenAI, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Anthropic, Coinbase/Cloudflare, Visa, Mastercard, Replit, and emerging startups
  • Infrastructure: Payment rails, agent identity/auth, trust models, developer SDKs, agent wallets
  • Economics: Fee structures, merchant ROI, market size projections ($3–5T globally by 2030)
  • Regulation: EU AI Act, GDPR, PSD3, U.S. landscape, liability gaps
  • Open Questions: Autonomous spending limits, multi-agent negotiation, protocol convergence

How It Is Updated

This is a living document. The paper includes:

  • A Last Updated date in the header
  • A comparison table that serves as the continuously-maintained core reference
  • A changelog at the bottom tracking all major revisions

Updates are made as significant developments occur — new protocol launches, major player announcements, regulatory actions, or meaningful market data releases. Each update is committed with a descriptive message and the changelog is appended.

Structure

├── PAPER.md    # The research paper (all sections, references, changelog)
└── README.md   # This file

Citation

If referencing this work:

"Agentic Commerce: The Emerging Infrastructure for AI-Initiated Transactions." Living research document, March 2026. https://github.com/[repo-url]

License

Content is provided for research and educational purposes.