American Express Introduces a System to Stop AI Agents from Making Unauthorized Purchases

American Express has introduced the Intent Intelligence Framework, a mechanism designed to capture and authenticate a customer’s purchase intent before an AI agent completes a transaction. Personal AI agents are increasingly acting for users in commerce, and the nondeterministic nature of large language models, the systems behind many AI agents, can lead to actions that were never authorized. American Express says the goal is to ensure that purchase instructions are carried throughout the transaction lifecycle, from the purchase to everything that follows. The company hopes the framework will become an industry standard for AI-powered transactions.

Background: AI Agents Are Entering the Transaction Flow

The agentic transaction model adds a new participant to the familiar payment relationship. “These new transactions will have a consumer, a merchant, and an agent,” Hannah Bozian, American Express’s Vice President of Agentic Partnerships and Strategy, told TechCrunch. She said the company wants agentic transactions to remain “seamless, trusted, and secure, the way our card members expect them to be.”

The framework follows the April launch of Agentic Commerce Experiences, a developer toolkit that now includes the intent framework. American Express said it has not yet seen an increase in disputes caused by agentic commerce, but it wants to build the technology before this type of commerce scales. Survey responses suggest consumers are open to using agents for price research and recommendations: in a recent American Express Trendex report, 66% of surveyed United States 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 AI agents for a product or service recommendation over the next 12 months.

How the Framework Captures and Verifies Intent

The process begins with the Create Intent API. It captures the customer’s purchase instructions and any constraints included in the request, such as the merchant’s name, a maximum budget, and product preferences. Bozian said the way intent is collected may vary depending on the AI model involved, but American Express plans to make the framework flexible enough to support all agentic commerce models.

The customer then authenticates their identity and signs off on the intent captured by the agent. That signed intent becomes an Intent ID, a unique identifier representing the customer’s request. Alongside it, American Express creates a Proof of Intent Token containing the customer’s high-level constraints. The token is used to obtain a secure digital payment credential, which the agent presents at checkout instead of the customer’s actual credit card number. American Express said this keeps the purchase secure while aligning the transaction with what the customer authorized the agent to do.

The Intent ID and token can also be used across different parts of the transaction process. That gives companies tools for areas such as fraud prevention and dispute resolution. Bozian said American Express’s approach differs from other implementations because it pulls intent earlier into the transaction flow. “And this is important because it helps mitigate some risk before the risk occurs,” she said.

One example she gave involved a customer asking an agent to buy white Nike sneakers in a size 9. If the agent submitted a request to purchase shoes from Adidas instead, American Express could prevent the transaction from completing because the agent had made a mistake.

What Comes Next for Agentic Commerce

Bozian noted that many agents today ask for customer consent before making a purchase, but American Express expects some agents to act much more autonomously in some cases. A consumer might, for example, allow an agent to reorder household staples such as paper towels or toilet paper. In those categories, the only real constraints are price and size, not merchant or brand. Bozian said it makes sense to have technology in the loop to perform an extra check and ensure the transaction matches the customer’s intent.

She also said a log of what was authorized, by which agent, and when could help address fraud carried out on behalf of an agent. American Express is already in discussions with partners across the payments ecosystem for implementing the Agentic Commerce Experiences toolkit, including agentic tokens that contain American Express payment credentials and other parts of the developer kit. The company said it plans to actively develop the toolkit further as the agentic commerce ecosystem evolves.

The next public milestone is October 13, when Bozian is scheduled to speak on the Industry Stage at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026. She is expected to discuss the Intent Intelligence Framework in more detail and explain what it means for the world of agentic commerce.

Meta Description: American Express launches the Intent Intelligence Framework to capture and authenticate customer purchase intent before AI agents complete transactions.

Tags: American Express, Intent Intelligence Framework, agentic commerce, AI transactions, secure payments

Featured Image: Abstract technology illustration of an intent token moving through a secure payment pipeline, with no people, logos, or text.