A2B · Agent-to-Business

The Problem

When an AI agent buys something from a Web2 merchant on your behalf — a gift card, a subscription, a plane ticket, an Uber ride — trust collapses into a single sentence:

"Did the agent spend my money the way I wanted it to?"

Today there is no way to answer that question without trusting the agent vendor, the platform operator, and the merchant simultaneously. Any of them can misbehave, go offline, get hacked, or get blocked by regulators — and your funds and your delivery are at risk.

A2B solves this by removing the need to trust any of those parties.

The Answer

A2B is a protocol layer that sits between your agent and any Web2 merchant. Every payment:

• Is constrained by a signed Intent. The agent commits up-front to what it may spend, on what, and by when. That commitment is signed and written to a public blockchain before any money moves.
• Is custodied by a smart contract. Funds are locked in an on-chain checklist. They cannot move unless each checklist slot advances in order. Not the Platform, not the agent, not the merchant can short-circuit that.
• Produces evidence anyone can verify. Every step is recorded and anchored on-chain. After the fact, you (or your auditor, or a regulator) can reconstruct the entire transaction with the SDK's audit commands.
• Refunds itself if anything goes wrong. After the deadline, any participant — including you, sitting at home on your laptop — can call expireOrder on the contract and the funds come back to your smart account automatically.

What You Can Do With It

A2B is designed to cover any case where an agent pays a Web2 merchant on someone's behalf. Representative categories:

• Digital top-ups, gift cards, subscription renewals — "renew my Netflix", "buy a $25 Uber gift card", "top up my phone"
• Local transport — agent orders a ride and pays at completion
• Travel — hotel bookings, airline tickets, tours
• E-commerce — agent purchases a specific item within a budget
• SaaS and recurring services — agent subscribes to tools on the user's behalf
• Long-tail and independent commerce — any merchant with a public API can be integrated
• Agent virtual cards — infrastructure for "agent spends at any merchant" (via on/off-ramp)

The list above enumerates categories we have researched integration paths for. The protocol itself does not restrict category, country, supplier, or chain. Any merchant with a public API or webhook can plug into the same custody and audit layer.

Why It Matters

How It Feels From the User Side

A2B is designed so that the user's mental model stays simple. You approve a spending envelope once, confirm large amounts if you chose to set a threshold, and the rest happens behind the scenes. After settlement, your dashboard shows:

• The signed Intent (what you agreed to)
• The on-chain fund flow (deposit → merchant → any refund)
• The delivery (gift card code, receipt, confirmation number)
• An audit status badge — green if every piece of on-chain evidence agrees, amber otherwise

Everything behind the badge is independently verifiable without trusting anything we tell you.

Where to Next

• How It Works — the user-visible flow, step by step
• Merchant Onboarding — what it takes for a Web2 merchant to plug into A2B
• Zero-Trust Audit — the three commands for verifying any past order yourself
• A2B FAQ — the concerns we hear most often, answered directly
• A2B Subprotocol Spec — the protocol layer if you want to go deep