Payment Mandate (AP2)

A Payment Mandate is the AP2 credential that proves to the credential provider, the card network and the merchant payment processor that a shopping agent is authorized to pay for one particular checkout.

Who touches it. In AP2 v0.2 the shopping agent assembles the Payment Mandate content, a trusted surface shows it to the user for approval and signing, and the credential provider, network and merchant payment processor verify it. The credential provider releases a payment credential only after verification succeeds. When the processor accepts or rejects the payment, it must return a signed Payment Receipt to the agent, the credential provider and, where relevant, the network.

How it is bound to a purchase. The mandate is tied to a checkout by the cryptographic hash of the merchant-signed checkout JWT, the same checkout the Checkout Mandate covers. To stop rainbow-table attacks on that hash, the specification requires the checkout JWT to use a randomized signature scheme such as ECDSA rather than a deterministic one such as Ed25519.

Open and closed forms. A closed Payment Mandate uses the vct value mandate.payment.1 and describes one payment. An open one uses mandate.payment.open.1, carries the agent’s public key in a cnf claim, and lists constraints the later closed mandate must meet: agent recurrence, allowed payees, allowed payment instruments, allowed payment initiation service providers, amount range, budget, a reference to the checkout, and execution date. Mandates are SD-JWTs, so the agent discloses only the claims a verifier needs.

The disclosed content of a closed Payment Mandate, adapted from the specification’s example:

{
  "vct": "mandate.payment.1",
  "transaction_id": "NivWhuqfzcvZNapvIEJ2-3tsdQLkiuIcye2g46WVgX8",
  "payee": {"id": "merchant_1", "name": "Demo Merchant", "website": "https://demo-merchant.example"},
  "payment_amount": {"amount": 19900, "currency": "USD"},
  "payment_instrument": {"id": "stub", "type": "card", "description": "Card ending 4242"}
}

In the example, transaction_id holds the same value as the Checkout Mandate’s checkout_hash.

Version note. AP2 v0.1 (September 2025) also had a Payment Mandate, but there it was a credential shared with the network and issuer for visibility into agent transactions, bound to a Cart or Intent Mandate. In v0.2 (April 2026) it is one of only two mandate types.

Neighbouring terms. The Checkout Mandate is its counterpart for the merchant. Together with their receipts, the two mandates are AP2’s dispute evidence.