# PAP vs ACP: Personal Agent Protocol vs OpenAI’s ACP

> ACP solves paying. PAP solves getting in the door. The odd detail: Bret Taylor, who leads PAP at Sierra, chairs OpenAI’s board, and OpenAI still isn’t part of PAP.

Source page: https://pap.md/compare/pap-vs-acp  
Last checked against sources: Oct 8, 2026  
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|  | PAP | ACP |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Question it answers | May this agent act on this account? | How does the agent pay without seeing the card? |
| Created by | Sierra and Meta | OpenAI and Stripe |
| Spec status | Not published | Published |
| Payments | Future extension | Core: shared payment token |
| In production | No reported deployments | ChatGPT Instant Checkout |
| First public | Oct 6, 2026 | Sep 29, 2025 |

## What each one does

Stripe and OpenAI released ACP on September 29, 2025. It powers Instant Checkout in ChatGPT. The key piece is a shared payment token, scoped to one merchant and one amount, so the agent can pay without ever holding the card number.

PAP doesn’t do payments yet. Its announced v0.1 model is an OAuth session with read-only or write access. "Payments extensions could let a personal agent complete a purchase without sharing credit card information," Sierra wrote, which reads a lot like what ACP’s token already does.

## Where they meet

Stripe is the bridge. It co-wrote ACP and is a PAP launch partner. Its head of payments, Kevin Miller, said Stripe is contributing so businesses get "a standard way to recognize their customers’ agents".

Taylor told CNBC he’d be "really disappointed" if competitors didn’t use PAP. Whether that means OpenAI joins, or PAP’s payment extension leans on ACP-style tokens, is open.

**Bottom line:** Complementary today. If PAP’s payment extension ships, Stripe will be the one deciding how much they overlap.

## Quick answers

### Is OpenAI part of PAP?

No, as of October 8, 2026. Bret Taylor said he expects OpenAI and Anthropic to take part eventually.

### Does PAP use Stripe’s shared payment tokens?

Nothing published says so. Payments are a future PAP extension with no details yet.

### Can a business support both ACP and PAP?

Nothing in either announcement prevents it. They cover different steps of the same purchase.

PAP's v0.1 spec isn't published yet, so the PAP column reflects the October 6, 2026 announcement only.

## Sources

1. [Introducing Personal Agent Protocol](https://sierra.ai/blog/introducing-personal-agent-protocol) · Sierra (Bret Taylor, Clay Bavor), Oct 6, 2026
2. [Stripe powers Instant Checkout in ChatGPT and releases Agentic Commerce Protocol codeveloped with OpenAI](https://stripe.com/newsroom/news/stripe-openai-instant-checkout) · Stripe, Sep 29, 2025
3. [Meta joins with group of companies to tame 'chaos' of doing business with AI bots](https://www.cnbc.com/2026/10/06/meta-joins-companies-to-tame-chaos-of-doing-business-with-ai-bots.html) · CNBC, Oct 6, 2026
4. [Meta's Personal Agent Protocol Signs Walmart Before It Has a Spec](https://www.beri.net/article/meta-sierra-personal-agent-protocol-oauth-guest-read-write-access-vs-ucp-acp-trusted-agent-protocol-retail-banks) · BERI