American Express published an open technical specification on October 13 that cryptographically binds a consumer's purchase authorization to the specific constraints of that purchase, including the merchant, budget ceiling, and product specifications, and makes that binding verifiable at every stage of the transaction, including before an AI agent reaches checkout2.
The Intent Intelligence framework, available through the Amex Agentic Commerce Experiences Developer Toolkit, uses a four-step lifecycle to transform a consumer's purchase instruction into a cryptographically secured payment credential. The Create Intent API captures the customer's purchase instructions and constraints. After the agent records the intent, the consumer authenticates and explicitly signs off. The system then generates a unique Intent ID and a Proof of Intent Token encoding what was authorized. That token is used to obtain a secure digital payment credential scoped to the approved transaction parameters.
American Express confirmed to Digital Commerce 360 that Intent Intelligence has no live integrations yet1. The company said publishing the framework is intended to let other payment and technology providers adopt its approach, rather than introduce new capabilities.
Pre-checkout enforcement
The framework's design allows American Express to decline a transaction before it clears if the agent submits a purchase that does not match the consumer's captured intent or exceeds the approved budget. The Intent ID and Proof of Intent Token remain available after checkout for fraud prevention, authorization decision-making, and dispute resolution. Card issuers can use those records to help detect fraud, approve payments, and resolve disputes, while retailers can determine whether an ordering mistake originated with an AI agent.
"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 is designed to be model-agnostic and works regardless of which AI model or interface captures the request. Consumers can edit their intent or cancel it entirely through either the American Express app or their agent interface.
Crowded agentic-commerce field
The specification was announced alongside a presentation by Hannah Bozian, American Express's Vice President of Agentic Partnerships and Strategy, at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 in San Francisco. Its open publication, rather than a proprietary rollout, signals American Express's intent to shape how the broader payments industry implements intent-based credentialing.
American Express said it is currently seeing thousands of weekly agentic-commerce transactions across its integrations. A recent American Express Trendex survey found that 66% of U.S. consumers said they are likely to use AI agents to research the best price for a product or service within the next twelve months, and 61% said they would likely use an agent for a product recommendation. The company said it has not yet seen a meaningful increase in disputes attributable to AI agents.
ANALYSIS The open-specification approach places Intent Intelligence in a competitive landscape alongside reported agentic-commerce protocols from other payment and technology providers, where the differentiator is not payment processing itself but the verifiable chain of consumer intent that precedes it.