Mandate
A record of bounded intent or authority, represented so that another system can verify it — naming who authorised what, for whom, within which limits and for how long.
Updated 15 September 2026
In practice
A signed record permits one named supplier, one purpose, a maximum amount and a two-hour window, and requires fresh approval if the total or the seller changes.
The distinction
A mandate represents authority; it does not enforce it. The receiving system still has to validate the scope, expiry and revocation state, and a payment credential that can spend is not the same as permission to buy this thing from this supplier.
What a usable mandate answers
- Which legal or account principal owns the budget
- Which agent or workload may propose the purchase
- Permitted supplier, category and geography
- The purpose and the required output
- Per-purchase and cumulative limits
- Currency, asset, network and fee limits
- Start, expiry and revocation
- Whether a change to price, recipient, scope or delivery needs fresh approval
- Which data may be disclosed
- Who can stop, reconcile and remedy the job
Approval binds to the effect, not the topic
Approving "handle my inbox" is too broad to authorise sending any particular message. Approving a draft is incomplete if the agent can change the recipient or the attachment afterwards.
Effective approval binds to a canonical representation of the proposed action — target, operation, material fields and timing — expires, and fails when a material field changes. A denial or an expiry is never converted into approval by retrying.
Three different things
A mandate says what was authorised. A credential is what gets presented to the seller or payment system. An authorisation is the issuer's or bank's acceptance of a proposed payment.
They are frequently collapsed into one word, which is how an agent ends up with a token that can spend far beyond the job it was given.
Sources & context
AP2 specification
Google Agentic Commerce · v0.2
Specifies signed Intent, Checkout and Payment Mandates for human-present and constrained human-not-present commerce. It binds represented constraints and does not supply a catalogue, rail, contract or dispute institution.
Source checked 2026-09-13
PayTo FAQs
Australian Payments Plus · 2026
Describes agreements stating amount, purpose and frequency for one-off, ad hoc and recurring debits that customers can view and manage. The agreement authorises a debit, not the underlying job.
Source checked 2026-09-13