Google Donates New Agentic Payments Protocol to FIDO Foundation, Announces PayPal Partnership

Google launched the Agentic Payments Protocol, known as AP2, and donated it to the FIDO Foundation, Richard Widmann, global head of Web3 strategy at Google Cloud, said at the Consensus Miami conference on May 8, 2026 in Miami Beach, Florida. The open protocol has more than 120 partners including PayPal.

Widmann compared the launch to the x402 internet-native payment standard that was given to the Linux Foundation.

"Open dialogues and open standards are really the foundation you need to build on," he said. Senior figures from Google Cloud and PayPal told the conference that open payment protocols, machine-readable merchant catalogs and multi-party crypto custody are needed to scale agentic commerce.

They said AI agents are structurally locked out of traditional bank accounts, making crypto rails the natural payments layer.

"An agent cannot get a bank account. It's not hard, it just is impossible," Widmann said, citing technological and regulatory barriers. " May Zabaneh, senior vice president and general manager of crypto at PayPal, said the company is treating agents as the next channel after evolving from offline to online to mobile commerce.

PYUSD, PayPal's stablecoin, is "a very natural programmable layer for payments," she said. A PayPal survey found that 95% of merchants now see AI agent traffic on their sites. The same survey found that only 20% of merchants have machine-readable catalogs.

"Merchants need to be ready for this next era," Zabaneh said. The shift mirrors the earlier move from offline to online stores, requiring merchants to expose products in agent-readable formats. " Google has extended its Cloud KMS platform to cryptocurrency custody.

Widmann said an agent should hold only one of two or three key shards rather than the full private key. "It cannot simply unilaterally move funds or take action," he said. CoinDesk reported that the executives emphasized the need for these technical foundations to enable the next wave of internet commerce running on crypto rails.

Widmann noted the existing internet user experience does not extend to autonomous agents. Asked what keeps them up at night, Widmann said the open question is how to onboard agents into existing capital markets and infrastructure that powers payments and trading today. Zabaneh said trust keeps her up professionally.