Personal AI agents are increasingly making transactions on their users’ behalf, but given the nondeterministic nature of large language models, AI bots are prone to doing what they’re not supposed to do. This inherent unpredictability raises the growing possibility of AI misfiring and making unauthorized transactions that could cost consumers time and money.
To get ahead of this emerging problem, American Express is introducing a new framework designed to capture and authenticate a customer’s purchase intent before an AI agent completes a transaction.
The underlying idea is that there should be a reliable way to ensure that a customer’s purchase instructions are carried throughout the entire transaction lifecycle, according to Amex, spanning from the initial product search and purchase decision to everything that follows post-checkout.
Dubbed the “Intent Intelligence Framework,” the financial services giant hopes the new system will eventually become an industry standard for secure, AI-powered transactions as autonomous shopping gains mainstream traction.
These new types of transactions fundamentally change the traditional buyer-seller dynamic by introducing a third entity into the equation, explained Amex’s VP of Agentic Partnerships and Strategy, Hannah Bozian, in an interview. She noted that the company wanted to ensure these agentic transactions remain seamless, trusted, and secure in the exact ways card members have always expected from American Express.
This framework’s release directly follows the company’s April launch of Amex’s Agentic Commerce Experiences, or the ACE Developer Toolkit, which includes a handful of developer services that now officially incorporate the new intent framework.
Amex stated that it has not yet seen a noticeable increase in consumer disputes specifically driven by agentic commerce errors, but the company wanted to be proactive in building robust security technology as this type of digital commerce scales globally. Part of this urgency stems from clear signals that consumers are eager to experiment with agentic commerce tools for their everyday shopping needs.
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 over the coming months. Furthermore, 61% of respondents indicated they are likely to use an AI agent for personalized product or service recommendations over the next 12 months, highlighting a massive consumer appetite for automated purchasing assistance.
To operationalize this vision, Amex’s new intent framework begins with a Create Intent API. This application programming interface is designed to capture the customer’s precise purchase instructions along with any other specific constraints they may have included in their request, such as the preferred merchant’s name, a strict maximum budget, and other relevant product preferences.
How this intent is collected may vary depending on the specific underlying AI model involved, but the strategic plan is to make the framework flexible enough to support all existing and emerging agentic commerce models, Bozian explained.
Once the initial parameters are established, the customer authenticates their identity and officially signs off on the purchase intent captured by their AI agent.
Following this authorization, a unique Intent ID representing the customer’s intent is created, alongside a Proof of Intent Token that securely encapsulates the customer’s high-level constraints. This specialized token is then utilized to obtain a secure digital payment credential. Instead of handing over the customer’s actual credit card number, the AI agent uses this digital credential at checkout. By utilizing this method, Amex says the purchase remains entirely secure while strictly remaining aligned with what the customer originally authorized the agent to do.
This generated Intent ID and token can also be deployed across different parts of the wider transaction process, helping companies effectively manage critical business areas such as advanced fraud prevention and streamlined dispute resolution, according to Amex executives.
The core differentiator of this strategy lies in timing. By capturing intent much earlier in the transaction flow, the system helps mitigate financial and operational risk before the risk can even occur, Bozian noted.
As a practical example, Bozian offered a scenario where a customer asks their personal AI agent to buy white Nike sneakers in a specific size 9, but the agent mistakenly submits a purchase request for shoes made by Adidas instead. In such an instance, Amex’s framework could successfully intercept and prevent the transaction from going through because the AI agent deviated from the customer’s defined parameters.
Bozian also noted that while many AI agents today routinely ask for explicit customer consent before making a single purchase, Amex foresees a future where agents may act much more autonomously in routine situations.
For instance, a consumer might grant their AI agent ongoing permission to automatically re-order household staples, such as paper towels or toilet paper. In these routine categories, the only real constraints are the maximum price point and product size, rather than a specific merchant or brand loyalty. In these recurring scenarios, having technological safeguards actively in the loop performing extra checks is vital to ensure the automated transactions always match the customer’s true intent.
Maintaining a clear digital log of what was authorized by which specific agent and at what exact time could also help address instances of fraud on behalf of the agent, she added.
American Express is already engaged in active discussions with key partners across the broader payments ecosystem to facilitate the implementation of ACE. This includes integrating agentic tokens that contain Amex’s secure payment credentials, alongside other foundational components of the developer kit.
The company stated that it plans to actively develop the ACE platform further as the agentic commerce ecosystem continues to mature and evolve in the coming years.
Industry observers and fintech professionals will be tracking these developments closely. On October 13 at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026’s Industry Stage, Hannah Bozian, VP of Agentic Partnerships and Strategy at American Express, is scheduled to discuss the company’s new “Intent Intelligence Framework” in much greater detail, shedding further light on what it means for the future world of agentic commerce.
