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Meta, Sierra, Shopify, Stripe, Walmart and OpenAI back an open standard for agent-to-business interactions
In the week of 6–9 October 2026, Meta and customer-service AI company Sierra announced the Personal Agent Protocol, an open standard for secure interactions between personal AI assistants and businesses. Early partners include Shopify, Stripe and Walmart. On 9 October, Sierra published a draft specification called "Poppy" and named 35 more design partners, including OpenAI, PayPal, Mastercard, Visa, Bank of America and Cloudflare, according to a TechStartups roundup of the week's AI news. The goal is a common way for your AI assistant to talk to a company's systems to book, buy, ask questions or resolve problems.
AI assistants are moving from answering questions to taking actions: booking a table, returning an order, comparing insurance quotes or paying a bill. These AI agents face a practical problem: every business has different systems, logins and rules.
Without a shared standard:
A protocol sets common rules for identity, permissions and messages, similar to how email or web standards let different systems work together.
Details are still in draft. The core concepts reported so far are:
| Concept | What it means |
|---|---|
| Personal agent | The AI assistant acting on behalf of a consumer |
| Business agent | The company's AI or system that responds (for example, a Sierra-powered support agent) |
| Secure interaction | A trusted channel for requests, confirmations and payments |
| Open standard | Anyone can implement it, rather than one company controlling it |
In practice, your assistant might contact a retailer's agent, check stock, confirm a price, and complete a purchase through partners such as Stripe, PayPal, Visa or Mastercard, all within limits you set.
The protocol is one of several efforts to standardise the "agentic web". Earlier work includes the Model Context Protocol (MCP) for connecting AI models to tools and data, and agent-to-agent communication proposals. Security is a growing concern: in the same week, Microsoft introduced Microsoft Execution Containers, a system designed to keep AI agents within permitted boundaries.
An open standard, announced by Meta and Sierra in October 2026, for secure communication between personal AI assistants and businesses.
Early partners include Shopify, Stripe and Walmart. Additional design partners include OpenAI, PayPal, Mastercard, Visa, Bank of America and Cloudflare.
The name of the draft specification Sierra published on 9 October 2026.
That is one of the main use cases. Agents would complete purchases within limits and permissions you set.
The Personal Agent Protocol suggests the industry is preparing for AI assistants to act for users at scale. If it gains wide adoption, it could change how people shop, get support and pay online, and businesses that prepare early will be easier for those agents to work with.
