Discover and compare
The agent identifies candidate services and compares price, source context and policy eligibility before payment is relevant.
Payment is a rail.
Authority is the control plane.
M2M Market places payment inside a governed procurement lifecycle rather than treating a wallet or HTTP 402 exchange as the whole system. Payment-integration availability varies by rail and customer scope.
How it fits
From buying intent to accountable commercial state
The selected payment rail does not replace policy, service execution, outcome verification or receipts.
Authorize and quote
Delegated authority, budget controls and commercial terms are evaluated before a transaction can be considered.
Reserve and execute
Where the selected flow requires it, commercial exposure is bounded before provider execution.
Evaluate
Execution success is kept separate from whether the returned result satisfies evidence-dependent outcome criteria.
Reconcile and record
Commercial state and portable receipt evidence are recorded separately from outcome correctness.
Protocol roles
Different standards solve different layers.
x402 and MPP provide payment-exchange mechanisms; AP2 focuses agentic payment authorization and evidence; A2A and MCP address other interoperability layers. M2M coordinates the canonical procurement and trust lifecycle around them.
x402
M2M supports x402 v2 buyer, seller and Bazaar-related interoperability. General live purchasing is currently limited; see Standards & Integrations for the customer-facing scope.
MPP
The adapter maps MPP payment evidence into canonical M2M reservation, reconciliation and receipt semantics. Public payment execution is not generally available.
AP2
M2M bridges AP2 v0.2 authorization and evidence. External transaction signing is not generally available; no third-party certification is claimed.
M2M Market
Coordinates discovery, comparison, commercial authority, execution evidence, outcome verification, reconciliation and portable receipts independently of the selected rail.
FAQ
Questions about agent payments
What are AI agent payments?+
AI agent payments are transactions initiated by autonomous software within authority defined by an operator or application. The important distinction is autonomy within limits, not unrestricted access to funds.
Is M2M Market a payment protocol?+
No. M2M Market is a protocol-neutral procurement and outcome-verification control plane. Payment execution is one stage in a larger lifecycle that also covers discovery, comparison, authorization, quotes, execution evidence, reconciliation and receipts.
How do x402, MPP and AP2 relate to M2M?+
They solve interoperability problems around payment exchange or authorization. M2M can adapt those rails while keeping canonical commercial authority, verification and receipt semantics protocol-neutral.
Does payment success prove the service outcome was useful?+
No. Settlement answers a commercial question. Outcome verification is separate and depends on service-specific evidence.
Are unrestricted autonomous payments generally available?+
Availability varies by integration and use case. M2M supports payment rails within defined scopes and server-side authority controls; Standards & Integrations shows the current customer-facing scope for each rail.