American Express has introduced an Intent Intelligence Framework designed to stop shopping agents from making purchases outside a customer’s instructions. It captures the intended merchant, maximum budget and product preferences before checkout, then asks the customer to authenticate and approve those constraints.
The system creates an Intent ID and a Proof of Intent Token that carries the high-level limits. An agent uses the token to obtain a secure digital payment credential rather than receiving the customer’s actual card number. Amex says the same record can support fraud checks and later dispute resolution.
A request for white Nike shoes in size 9, for example, could be blocked if the agent tries to buy a different brand. The framework can also represent looser recurring instructions, such as restocking household supplies below a price ceiling, where a person may not approve every transaction separately.
Amex says it has not yet seen an increase in disputes caused by agentic commerce. The framework is therefore preventive and is not yet an established industry standard. It is part of the company’s ACE developer toolkit, and Amex is discussing implementation with payment partners as autonomous purchasing grows.