What is American Express Intent Intelligence Framework?

Agentic commerce is a form of online shopping in which AI agents independently search for, choose and pay for things on behalf of people. The hard part is trust: an agent might buy something the person never approved, which leads to disputes that are costly for everyone involved in the payment. The Intent Intelligence framework describes how to record what a customer approved, such as a maximum amount, a merchant preference and a time limit, before the agent buys. The customer signs off, a token carrying those limits is issued, and it can be used to obtain a payment credential (a stand-in for the real card number) limited to those constraints. American Express published the framework on October 13, 2026.

Written from primary sources and reference pages, and checked against them by an independent AI fact-checker. Drafted with AI assistance.