Meta and Sierra announce Personal Agent Protocol with Stripe, Shopify and Walmart

Meta and the enterprise AI startup Sierra announced the Personal Agent Protocol on October 6, an open standard intended to define how consumers’ personal AI agents interact with businesses, according to a blog post by Sierra co-founders Bret Taylor and Clay Bavor, reported by PYMNTS. Sierra’s announcement names Genesys, Instinct, Rocket, Shopify, Stripe and Walmart as industry partners. Meta’s own list also includes NiCE and Decagon, according to CMSWire.

The protocol will handle authentication, let consumers decide what access to give their personal agents, and let companies set boundaries for what agents can do through their websites, APIs or company-run agents, according to the post as summarised by PYMNTS. It is built on OAuth, according to The Next Web. The specification is due to be published by the end of October, PYMNTS reported, and the standard will be open for anyone to implement.

Taylor, who also chairs OpenAI and is leading the initiative, according to CNBC, said it will be “chaos until such a standard exists” that gives businesses visibility into what personal agents do on their sites, Gizmodo reported.

Meta introduced Muse, a personal AI agent available in the United States and Canada, in September, according to the company’s newsroom. The Personal Agent Protocol joins other efforts on agent identity. EMVCo opened a draft framework for card-based agentic payments on September 1, and India’s NPCI is developing a national registry to vet AI agents on UPI.