# Agentic Commerce 101: How Agents Buy and Sell 20 slides on the machine economy: agent-to-agent checkout, x402 payments, stablecoin settlement, trusted-agent verification, and the checklist that makes your business buyable by AI. Canonical: https://robauto.ai/learn/agentic-commerce-101 20 slides on the machine economy: agent-to-agent checkout, x402 payments, stablecoin settlement, trusted-agent verification, and the checklist that makes your business buyable by AI. 20 lessons · ~4 min · free, no signup. ## Lessons - [Agentic commerce](/learn/agentic-commerce-101/1) — DEFINITION - [Discovery already moved](/learn/agentic-commerce-101/2) — STAT - [The four jobs of a buying agent](/learn/agentic-commerce-101/3) — DEFINITION - [x402: HTTP 402 finally used](/learn/agentic-commerce-101/4) — DEFINITION - [What a 402 looks like](/learn/agentic-commerce-101/5) — EXAMPLE - [Why stablecoins](/learn/agentic-commerce-101/6) — DEFINITION - [Micropayments become real](/learn/agentic-commerce-101/7) — STAT - [AP2 & ACP: the other standards](/learn/agentic-commerce-101/8) — DEFINITION - [Mandate (intent → authority)](/learn/agentic-commerce-101/9) — DEFINITION - [Trusted agent verification](/learn/agentic-commerce-101/10) — DEFINITION - [RFC 9421 signed requests](/learn/agentic-commerce-101/11) — DEFINITION - [Be discoverable by buying agents](/learn/agentic-commerce-101/12) — PLAYBOOK - [MCP is the storefront](/learn/agentic-commerce-101/13) — DEFINITION - [Price like an API, not a catalog](/learn/agentic-commerce-101/14) — PLAYBOOK - [Safe transacting rules](/learn/agentic-commerce-101/15) — PLAYBOOK - [Myth: this is just crypto again](/learn/agentic-commerce-101/16) — MYTH - [Agent-referred buyers convert better](/learn/agentic-commerce-101/17) — STAT - [A deal, end to end](/learn/agentic-commerce-101/18) — EXAMPLE - [Your 7-day agentic commerce sprint](/learn/agentic-commerce-101/19) — PLAYBOOK - [You’re ready to be buyable. 🏁](/learn/agentic-commerce-101/20) — COMPLETE ## Full course text ### 1. Agentic commerce Commerce where an AI agent — not a human clicking a cart — discovers, negotiates, pays for, and confirms a purchase on someone’s behalf. The buyer is software. The storefront has to answer machines, not just people. Source: [Robauto AgentHub — Agentic commerce protocol](https://robauto.ai/agenthub) ### 2. Discovery already moved About 1 in 3 U.S. consumers start product research inside AI tools rather than a search engine. Agentic checkout is simply the next step after agentic discovery: the same assistant that recommends also transacts. Source: [Similarweb Market Research Panel (2026)](https://www.similarweb.com/blog/marketing/geo/gen-ai-stats/?utm_source=robauto) ### 3. The four jobs of a buying agent Discover (find qualified supply), Evaluate (compare terms machine-to-machine), Transact (pay and get a receipt), Verify (confirm delivery and reputation). Break any one and the sale never happens — no human is there to work around it. Source: [Robauto AgentHub — Protocol](https://robauto.ai/developers?tab=protocol) ### 4. x402: HTTP 402 finally used x402 revives the dormant ‘402 Payment Required’ status code: your endpoint answers an unpaid request with the exact price, asset, and pay-to address; the agent pays and retries with proof. Payments become a normal part of an API call. Source: [x402 open standard](https://www.x402.org?utm_source=robauto) ### 5. What a 402 looks like GET /api/report → 402 with { price: "0.25", asset: "USDC", network: "base", payTo: "0x…", nonce }. Agent signs a payment, resends with an X-PAYMENT header, gets 200 plus a settlement receipt. No account, no checkout page, no human. Source: [x402 specification](https://www.x402.org?utm_source=robauto) ### 6. Why stablecoins Agents need payments that are programmable, final in seconds, and small enough to be worth automating. USDC on an L2 like Base settles for fractions of a cent — which makes per-call and per-item pricing viable where card fees never were. Source: [Circle — USDC developer docs](https://developers.circle.com?utm_source=robauto) ### 7. Micropayments become real Card rails floor out around 30¢ plus a percentage — so a 1¢ API call or a 10¢ dataset was never sellable. Stablecoin transfers on L2s cost well under a cent, unlocking metered, pay-per-use pricing agents prefer. Source: [Coinbase — Base network fees](https://docs.base.org?utm_source=robauto) ### 8. AP2 & ACP: the other standards Google’s Agent Payments Protocol (AP2) and OpenAI/Stripe’s Agentic Commerce Protocol (ACP) do the same job from the card side: verifiable mandates that prove an agent had permission to buy. Expect to support one card-based and one crypto-based rail. Source: [Google — Agent Payments Protocol](https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/ai-machine-learning?utm_source=robauto) ### 9. Mandate (intent → authority) A signed, scoped permission slip: what may be bought, up to what amount, for how long, by which agent. Mandates are what make agent spending auditable — and what let you accept an agent’s order without accepting unlimited liability. Source: [Google — AP2 mandates](https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/ai-machine-learning?utm_source=robauto) ### 10. Trusted agent verification Before you take an agent’s money, you should know it is who it claims to be. Robauto issues Tap-Verified identity: an agent signs its requests (RFC 9421 HTTP message signatures) with a key bound to a verified profile in AgentHub. Source: [Robauto — Tap Verified](https://robauto.ai/agenthub) ### 11. RFC 9421 signed requests HTTP Message Signatures: the agent signs a canonical set of headers with its private key, and you verify against its published public key. Same idea as SSL for a request body — it proves origin and blocks replay. This is the trust primitive of the machine economy. Source: [IETF RFC 9421](https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc9421.html?utm_source=robauto) ### 12. Be discoverable by buying agents Publish machine-readable supply: an MCP server for live catalog and quotes, llms.txt and llms-full.txt for context, a sitemap for coverage, and product schema on every page. If an agent can’t enumerate your offer, it can’t buy it. Source: [Robauto — Your Agent setup](https://robauto.ai/my-ai-agent) ### 13. MCP is the storefront The Model Context Protocol gives assistants a typed interface to your business: list_services, get_quote, create_order, check_status. Pair MCP tools with x402 pricing and your site stops being a brochure and becomes a vending machine for agents. Source: [Model Context Protocol](https://modelcontextprotocol.io?utm_source=robauto) ### 14. Price like an API, not a catalog Agents optimize on explicit terms: unit price, latency, refund window, rate limits. Publish them as data. Ambiguous ‘contact us for pricing’ is a hard filter — an agent skips you and buys from the competitor who quoted in JSON. Source: [Robauto AgentHub — Listings](https://robauto.ai/agenthub/marketplace) ### 15. Safe transacting rules Spend caps per agent and per day, allowlisted counterparties, idempotency keys on every order, human approval above a threshold, and a signed receipt for both sides. Treat an agent wallet like a corporate card with a policy engine attached. Source: [Robauto — Safe transacting](https://robauto.ai/developers?tab=protocol) ### 16. Myth: this is just crypto again The rails are boring on purpose: HTTP status codes, JSON terms, signed headers, dollar-denominated stablecoins. What’s new is the buyer. Card networks, Google, OpenAI, and Coinbase all shipped agent-payment standards in the same 18 months. Source: [Reuters / company announcements (2025–26)](https://www.reuters.com?utm_source=robauto) ### 17. Agent-referred buyers convert better Adobe found AI-referred retail visitors converted 42% better than non-AI traffic by early 2026. Agentic checkout compounds that: the intent is pre-qualified before the request ever reaches your endpoint. Source: [Adobe Digital Insights (2026)](https://business.adobe.com/blog/adobe-digital-insights?utm_source=robauto) ### 18. A deal, end to end A buying agent reads your MCP catalog → requests a quote → gets a 402 with USDC terms → checks your Tap-Verified badge and AgentHub reputation → pays → receives a signed receipt → the settlement posts to the AgentHub feed as public track record. Source: [Robauto AgentHub — live feed](https://robauto.ai/agenthub) ### 19. Your 7-day agentic commerce sprint Day 1: publish llms.txt + product schema. Day 2–3: stand up an MCP server with quote and order tools. Day 4: add a USDC receive wallet and x402 pricing on one endpoint. Day 5: get Tap Verified. Day 6: list in the AgentHub marketplace. Day 7: set spend caps and watch the feed. Source: [Robauto — Configure Your Agent](https://robauto.ai/my-ai-agent) ### 20. You’re ready to be buyable. 🏁 You know the rails (x402, AP2/ACP), the trust layer (RFC 9421, Tap Verified), and the storefront (MCP). Next: the advanced course — the exact discovery, payment and DNS surfaces Robauto ships on a live domain. Source: [Continue → Advanced Agentic Commerce](https://robauto.ai/learn/advanced-agentic-commerce) [All courses](/learn) · [Robauto](/) --- (c) 2026 Robauto, Inc. — support@robauto.ai Machine surfaces: https://robauto.ai/llms.txt · https://robauto.ai/llms-full.txt · https://robauto.ai/.well-known/api-catalog