Sierra and Meta want AI agents to log into your favorite apps without you handing over a password.
The two companies are building Personal Agent Protocol, an open standard that spells out how a personal AI agent proves who it is to a business and what that business then lets it do. Genesys, Instinct, Rocket, Shopify, Stripe and Walmart are named as early participants. A first version, v0.1, is due out this month. Payments are explicitly carved out as a future extension, not something the initial spec handles.
Right now, every agent that wants to act on your behalf, whether booking a flight, returning a package, or checking an order, has to improvise its way past login screens built for humans. A shared authentication layer could turn that patchwork into something closer to OAuth for bots, letting any compliant agent and any compliant business talk to each other without custom integrations.
It is also the latest entry in a crowded field of agent-to-agent protocols chasing the same problem, and the real test will be whether retailers bother to adopt a standard that, for now, still cannot move money.