While ACP and AP2 dominate most of the conversation around agentic commerce, an equally important shift is happening behind the scenes: Visa, Mastercard, and regional networks are modernising their underlying network protocols to make agent-driven transactions possible at scale.

Today’s card networks were built for human-initiated, browser-based checkouts. Agentic commerce breaks this assumption completely — and the networks are responding.

Three specific trends stand out:

1. More granular, structured transaction metadata

Networks are enabling richer data fields to support:

• real-time fraud scoring,

• dynamic authentication paths,

• and low-data agent checkout flows.

This is key, because agentic transactions often lack device-level behavioural signals, pushing more decisioning to the network layer.

2. Protocols shifting toward “continuous communication”

Historically, card payments were a request/response model.
Agent commerce is pushing networks toward:

• multi-step exchanges,

• pre-authorisation data sharing,

• and conditional approvals.

This allows agents to verify stock, pricing, routing preferences, and even alternative payment methods before initiating an actual charge.

3. Tokenisation and identity frameworks being rebuilt for agents

Networks are experimenting with:

• cross-merchant identity tokens

• interoperable vaulting

• network-level consent logs

• lifecycle-management for agent-initiated credentials

These emerging standards will define how agents identify a customer, store preferences, and authenticate purchases securely — all without involving a traditional UI.

⭐ Why this matters for merchants

The modernisation of network protocols is a foundational enabler for:

• Autonomous checkout flows

• Higher approval rates for agent-led transactions

• Multi-rail orchestration (e.g., switching between card networks, A2A, wallets)

• Safer token handling for agent commerce

• Better fraud outcomes with reduced friction

Put simply: agentic commerce will not scale without network-level innovation.
As these protocols evolve, merchants that adopt network capabilities early — especially around data sharing and tokenisation — will likely see the strongest competitive advantage.