Amex unveils Intent Intelligence Framework to prevent unauthorized AI agent purchases

American Express has introduced the Intent Intelligence Framework, a new system designed to verify a customer's purchase intent before an AI agent completes a transaction. The company says the framework is meant to ensure that purchase instructions are carried through the entire transaction lifecycle, and it hopes the approach will become an industry standard for AI-powered payments.

The framework is part of Amex's Agentic Commerce Experiences (ACE) Developer Toolkit, which launched in April 2026. Its initial component is the Create Intent API, which captures a customer's purchase instructions and constraints such as merchant name, maximum budget, and product preferences. After the intent is captured, the customer authenticates their identity and approves it. The system then generates an Intent ID and a Proof of Intent Token containing the customer's high-level constraints, which are used to obtain a secure digital payment credential for checkout instead of the customer's real card number.

Hannah Bozian, Amex's VP of Agentic Partnerships and Strategy, said the approach differs from others by pulling intent earlier into the transaction flow, helping mitigate risk before it occurs. She gave an example in which a customer asks an agent to buy white Nike sneakers in size 9, but the agent mistakenly submits an order for Adidas shoes; the framework could block the transaction. Bozian also said that while many agents currently ask for consent before purchases, Amex anticipates more autonomous agent actions in the future, such as reordering household staples, making it important to have technology in the loop for extra checks.

Amex said it has not yet seen an increase in disputes tied to agentic commerce but wants to be proactive as this type of commerce scales. In a recent Amex Trendex report, 66% of surveyed U.S. consumers said they are likely to use AI agents to research the best price for a product or service, and 61% said they are likely to use agents for product or service recommendations over the next 12 months. The company is in discussions with partners across the payments ecosystem about implementing ACE and plans to continue developing the toolkit as agentic commerce evolves.