American Express has introduced a new framework designed to prevent AI agents from making unauthorized purchases on behalf of customers, by capturing and authenticating purchase intent before a transaction is completed.
The framework, called the "Intent Intelligence Framework," aims to ensure that a customer's purchase instructions are carried through the entire transaction lifecycle, from the initial request to post-purchase processes like fraud prevention and dispute resolution. Amex hopes it will become an industry standard for AI-powered transactions.
Personal AI agents are increasingly making transactions on users' behalf, but the nondeterministic nature of large language models makes them prone to errors, raising the possibility of AI misfiring and making unauthorized transactions.
"These new transactions will have a consumer, a merchant, and an agent," said Amex's VP of Agentic Partnerships and Strategy, Hannah Bozian, in an interview. She said the company wanted to ensure that agentic transactions remain "seamless, trusted, and secure, the way our card members expect them to be."
The framework builds on Amex's April launch of the Agentic Commerce Experiences (ACE) Developer Toolkit, which now includes the intent framework.
Amex said it has not yet seen an increase in disputes because of agentic commerce, but wanted to be proactive as this type of commerce scales, partly because consumers have shown interest. In a recent Amex Trendex report, 66% of surveyed U.S. consumers said they are likely to use AI agents to research the best price for a product or service, and 61% said they are likely to use it for product or service recommendations over the next 12 months.
The process begins with a Create Intent API that captures the customer's purchase instructions and constraints, such as the merchant's name, maximum budget, and product preferences. The customer then authenticates their identity and signs off on the intent.
An Intent ID and a Proof of Intent Token are created, containing the customer's high-level constraints. This token is used to obtain a secure digital payment credential that the agent uses at checkout instead of the customer's actual credit card number, ensuring the purchase remains secure and aligned with the customer's authorization.
"Our approach differs from the implementations of others in that it pulls intent earlier into the transaction flow. And this is important because it helps mitigate some risk before the risk occurs," said Bozian. She gave the example of a customer asking an agent to buy white Nike sneakers in size 9, but the agent mistakenly submitting a request for Adidas shoes; Amex could prevent the transaction from going through.
Bozian noted that while many agents today ask for customer consent before making a purchase, Amex foresees a future where agents may act much more autonomously, such as re-ordering household staples like paper towels or toilet paper, where the only real constraints are price and size.