Amex introduces a framework to prevent AI agents from making unauthorized purchases

Personal AI agents increasingly make transactions for users, but their nondeterministic nature raises the risk of unauthorized purchases. To address this, American Express introduced the "Intent Intelligence Framework," designed to capture and authenticate a customer's purchase intent before an AI agent completes a transaction. The framework aims to ensure purchase instructions persist throughout the transaction lifecycle and to become an industry standard for AI-powered transactions. It follows Amex's April launch of the ACE Developer Toolkit. The process starts with a Create Intent API that records the customer's instructions and constraints, such as merchant name and maximum budget. The customer then authenticates and approves the intent, after which an Intent ID and Proof of Intent Token are created. These are used to obtain a secure digital payment credential for checkout, replacing the actual credit card number. Amex says this keeps the purchase secure and aligned with customer authorization, and the ID and token can also aid fraud prevention and dispute resolution. Unlike other implementations, Amex pulls intent earlier in the flow to mitigate risk before it occurs. While current agents often seek consent, Amex anticipates more autonomous future agents, making an extra check valuable. Amex is already in discussions with payment ecosystem partners to implement ACE and plans to further develop it as agentic commerce evolves. On October 13 at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026, Amex's Hannah Bozian will discuss the framework in more detail.

(Source：TechCrunch)