American Express wants a receipt for what you told your AI agent before it spends your money. The company today published its Intent Intelligence framework, a recommended way to capture and authenticate a customer's purchase instructions before an agent checks out, and it's pitching the approach as an industry standard.
Here's how it works. An agent sends your request through a Create Intent API, including constraints like the merchant, a maximum budget and product preferences. You authenticate and sign off. Amex then issues an Intent ID and a Proof of Intent Token, and the agent uses that token to get a scoped digital payment credential instead of your actual card number. The same ID and token follow the purchase through authorization, fraud checks and disputes.
Hannah Bozian, Amex's VP of agentic partnerships and strategy, gave TechCrunch a simple example: you ask for white Nike sneakers in a size 9, the agent tries to buy Adidas, and Amex can stop the charge. The framework is part of the ACE developer kit Amex launched in April, and the company says it hasn't seen disputes rise from agent purchases yet.
Putting the check with the card issuer, instead of trusting the agent to police itself, is the smart part. Bozian said she expects agents to eventually reorder things like paper towels without asking, and that's exactly where a hard limit on brand, size and price earns its keep. Not every bank is warming up to agents, though. JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon said Tuesday that clients need to understand the risks of letting AI agents into their bank accounts, according to The Wall Street Journal.
— via TechCrunch, American Express, The Wall Street Journal.