Payments infrastructure and agentic commerce
I work on what happens when AI agents start moving money.
I help merchants, banks, card networks and fintechs get ready for customers who shop through AI agents: from being found by an agent to the payment settling.
Live simulation · an agent buys for someone
- Discover: a shopping agent finds trail running shoes for $139.
- Mandate: the person approves a spending limit of $150 for one pair, for 24 hours, with a passkey.
- Authorise: the issuer matches the payment to the mandate and approves it.
- Clear: the payment is routed as a network token; no card number is shared.
- Settle: $139 settles and the order is confirmed.
WHAT BREAKS
Illustrative. No real store, card or payment. Tap a stage to pause on it.
15+years in payments infrastructureAuthorisation, 3DS, orchestration and real-time rails at enterprise scale.
AP2 · ACPworking implementationsBuilt both, plus a bridge where a signed mandate confirms a real payment.
Paid Ita running series on agentic commerceProtocols, mandates, risk, and making merchants visible to AI.
Shaping how agents will pay
I work with teams, researchers and organisers building the next layer of commerce.
- Talks, panels and podcasts
- Agent-readiness reviews for merchants
- Protocol deep dives for payments teams
- Research and writing collaborations
Experiments · new
Writing · Paid It
A Life, Added Up
Every small moment of an 81-year life, added up into 29,585 lights. A data film, about three and a half minutes.
Watch the film → All experimentsA running series on agentic commerce
- From card present to human presentWhat Google's AP2 changes about trust
- Mandates that can be revokedThe zombie-mandate problem, and the fix
- Making your products visible to AIWhat shopping agents need from a store
AP2ACPUCPMandatesRiskMerchants
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Start a conversation
A talk, a merchant review, a protocol deep dive or a research idea: tell me what you are working on.
manu@manuzafar.com