UnionPay International has officially released the Agentic Payment Open Protocol (APOP) framework, its solution for enabling secure, interoperable agent-initiated payments.
The launch was accompanied by a live transaction completed in Hong Kong on 2 April 2026, in which a taxi booking was executed through an AI assistant developed by technology company Evonet, connecting to ride-hailing platform Hoppa to retrieve available vehicle options and complete the booking.
The APOP framework is designed to establish a unified trust mechanism and interaction model for agentic payments, enabling agents, merchants, financial institutions, and technology platforms to integrate on a plug-and-play basis across UnionPay's global acceptance network.
Framework architecture and core capabilities
The protocol is built on four core capabilities. First, lifecycle management of agent identity, covering registration, information updates, and deregistration. Second, end-to-end intent management encompasses generation, registration, and verification, establishing a trust mechanism centred on user intent. Third, simplified user identity management through single sign-on across participants, including agents, merchants, and financial institutions, with credentials sharing mechanisms that preserve privacy and security. Fourth, a comprehensive set of payment authorisation services covering activation authentication for agentic payments, payment debiting, and user consent verification.
The framework is governed by four design principles: regulatory compliance and controllability, security through agent identity verification and traceable intent management, clearly defined responsibilities and risk allocation across stakeholders to support dispute resolution, and broad compatibility to allow participants to integrate at low cost with high scalability.
UnionPay has positioned APOP as an open standard, seeking to develop industry-wide interoperability across institutions, platforms, and use cases both within and outside mainland China. The framework builds on UnionPay's existing global network presence as a neutral card scheme.
Commenting on the news, Dong Junfeng, Chairman of China UnionPay, stated that the company will work closely with industry partners to capitalise on the transformative opportunities presented by AI, with the goal of establishing payment standards that are secure, inclusive, efficient, and globally connected.
