Agentic Rails Atlasby merces.ai

Persona

Small merchant on a platform

Wants agent sales with near-zero integration work and no new fraud.

Verified (verified under 30 days ago)

Role

Goals

  • Turn on agent checkout from the platform dashboard (Shopify, Etsy, Wix) without hiring a developer.
  • Keep the order in the same system as every other order, with the same shipping and returns flow.
  • Get paid at the usual rate and settlement time, with no new fee line for agent orders.
  • Know which orders came from an agent so support can answer customer questions.
  • Avoid a rise in chargebacks or bot abuse because agents are now allowed in.

Pains

  • Agent orders arrive with a token the merchant did not see created, so when a customer disputes one, the merchant has little evidence of consent.
  • Some platforms enroll merchants in agent checkout automatically, and the merchant learns about it from a customer.
  • Bot management rules that keep scrapers out also block legitimate shopping agents, and the merchant cannot tell them apart.
  • The DTVC path lets agents fill ordinary card forms, which looks like card testing in fraud tools.
  • No agent-specific dispute reason codes exist at Visa or Mastercard, so an agent error is processed as a regular dispute.

Decisions they own

  • Whether to opt in to the platform's agent checkout or stay out until liability is clearer.
  • Whether to allow agents to browse only, or to browse and buy.
  • Which bot-management setting to run: block unknown bots, allow verified agents, or allow all.
  • Whether an agent order gets extra review before shipping.

Vocabulary

  • agent checkout
  • platform
  • chargeback
  • verified agent
  • bot traffic
  • order
  • fulfillment
  • refund
  • settlement
  • dispute
  • agentic token
  • payout

Each protocol from this seat

Relevance levels: High, a main persona on the protocol page; Medium, owns, implements or verifies a step; Low, relies on or observes a step; None, no role found in the protocol page.

ERC-8004: Trustless Agents

Relevance: None

Not one of the main personas on the ERC-8004: Trustless Agents page. The responsibility table gives this persona no step.

x402

Relevance: None

Not one of the main personas on the x402 page. The responsibility table gives this persona no step.

Visa Trusted Agent Protocol

Relevance: None

Not one of the main personas on the Visa Trusted Agent Protocol page. The responsibility table gives this persona no step.

Agentic Commerce Protocol (ACP)

Relevance: High

Sells through agent surfaces with as little integration as possible, usually through a platform or PSP rather than a hand-built ACP server. Source [1, 2, 3, 4]

Goals

  • Appear in ChatGPT product results
  • Keep using the existing checkout and PSP
  • Avoid PCI DSS scope changes

Pains

  • Approval for ChatGPT feeds is limited to approved partners
  • Fees are not published by OpenAI
  • Unclear which platform covers which protocol

Implements

  • A product feed through a provider such as Shopify Catalog, Salesforce or Stripe
  • External checkout on the merchant site

Must trust

  • The platform or PSP to implement ACP correctly
  • OpenAI to rank products fairly

Questions they ask

  • Do I need to build anything, or does my platform cover ACP?
  • What does a sale through ChatGPT cost me?
  • Who handles a chargeback?

First three steps

  1. Ask your commerce platform whether it sends your catalog to ChatGPT
  2. Check that your product data has ids, variants, prices and availability
  3. Read OpenAI's prohibited products list

Metrics they care about

  • Orders from AI surfaces
  • Feed errors
  • Refund and chargeback rate on agent orders

A day in the life. Tomas runs a small outdoor gear shop on a hosted platform. In 2025 he read that ChatGPT would let buyers check out in chat and waited for his platform to switch it on. In March 2026 the plan changed: OpenAI now pulls product data through feeds, and buyers finish on his own store. His platform already sends the catalog, so he fixes missing variant titles and stale prices, since a feed product needs ids and variants. Orders still arrive through his normal checkout and PSP. When a buyer disputes a tent, Tomas answers the chargeback himself, because he remains merchant of record.

Steps in the responsibility table

  • Relies onPublish /.well-known/acp.json
  • Relies onCreate and update the checkout session
  • OwnsReturn authoritative totals and messages
  • Relies onCharge the token inside the allowance
  • OwnsCreate the order (merchant of record)
  • OwnsHandle refunds and chargebacks

UCP

Relevance: None

Not one of the main personas on the UCP page. The responsibility table gives this persona no step.

AP2

Relevance: None

Not one of the main personas on the AP2 page. The responsibility table gives this persona no step.

Mastercard Agent Pay

Relevance: High

Sells online through an acquirer or PSP and wants agent orders without rebuilding checkout. Source [5, 6, 7, 8]

Goals

  • Accept agent purchases through the existing card form
  • Tell trusted agents from scrapers
  • Keep PCI scope unchanged

Pains

  • Bot defenses that block good agents
  • Not knowing which agents are registered
  • No clear dispute rules for agent orders

Implements

  • Registration for Agent Pay through the acquirer or PSP
  • Web Bot Auth verification, usually at the CDN
  • Normal card acceptance for tokens typed into the form

Must trust

  • The CDN to verify signatures correctly
  • Mastercard to certify agents
  • The acquirer to handle agent transactions like other card payments

Questions they ask

  • Do I need any code change for Level 1?
  • What happens to an untagged bot?
  • Who pays if an agent order is disputed?

First three steps

  1. Ask your acquirer or PSP how to register for Agent Pay
  2. Turn on signed-agent verification at your CDN if it offers it
  3. Test a checkout where the token is typed into your card form

Metrics they care about

  • Agent orders accepted
  • False blocks of signed agents
  • Chargebacks on agent orders

A day in the life. Ana runs a small cinema chain website on a hosted platform with Cloudflare in front. She keeps seeing bots in her logs and blocks most of them. Her acquirer tells her that Agent Pay agents sign their requests and that her CDN can check those signatures, while the agent types a token into her normal card form, so her PCI scope stays the same. She registers through the acquirer, switches on signed-agent verification at the edge and leaves her checkout untouched. Her open question is disputes: standard chargeback rules apply, and nothing agent-specific is published yet.

Steps in the responsibility table

  • ImplementsRegister merchant for Agent Pay
  • VerifiesSign request with Agent-pay-auth tag
  • OwnsVerify signature at edge or backend
  • VerifiesVerify Verifiable Intent chain
  • Relies onApprove or decline
  • ImplementsHandle dispute

Sources

  1. Powering Product Discovery in ChatGPT (external link)OpenAI. Announcement, primary source. Published . Accessed . Archived copy (external link).
  2. Agentic Commerce (OpenAI developer documentation; full Markdown export at /commerce/llms-full.txt) (external link)OpenAI. Documentation, primary source. Accessed .
  3. ACP JSON Schema, Feed, 2026-04-17 (external link)Agentic Commerce Protocol project. Specification, primary source. Accessed .
  4. Buy it in ChatGPT: Instant Checkout and the Agentic Commerce Protocol (external link)OpenAI. Announcement, primary source. Published . Accessed . Archived copy (external link).
  5. The Rails for Agentic Commerce (external link)Mastercard Developers (Merchant Cloud tutorials). Documentation, primary source. Accessed .
  6. Level 1 Agentic Commerce: Enable Agent Support with Minimal Changes (external link)Mastercard Developers (Merchant Cloud tutorials). Documentation, primary source. Accessed .
  7. Securing agentic commerce: helping AI Agents transact with Visa and Mastercard (external link)Cloudflare Blog. Announcement, primary source. Published . Accessed .
  8. Mastercard Agent Pay review (external link)Nevermined. Analysis. Published . Accessed .

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