ARM-defined
Accountable agentic commerce
Autonomous or semi-autonomous economic action governed by an explicit mandate, deterministic controls, inspectable execution, and reconciliation.
Canonical vocabulary · version 1.0.0
Accountable agentic commerce.
A source-bound vocabulary for systems in which agents can request resources, authorize payments, and produce economic consequences.
Definition boundary. x402 terms follow the x402 v2 specification. ARM-defined terms are operating definitions, not external standards. AiFi is a category label and does not imply affiliation with a similarly named entity.
ARM-defined
AiFi
ARM's category label for governed AI-native financial operations across authority, budgets, wallets, payments, settlement, fulfillment, and reconciliation.
ARM-defined
Agent mandate
A documented delegation naming the principal, agent, permitted objective, resources, counterparties, limits, duration, escalation conditions, and revocation authority.
ARM-defined
Bounded autonomy
Delegated action constrained by explicit resources, counterparties, amounts, time, escalation rules, and revocation controls.
ARM-defined
Evidence contract
The required record connecting mandate and intent to policy decision, authorization, settlement, fulfillment, and exception outcome.
ARM operating term
Payment intent
The proposed economic action before authorization, including requester, resource, recipient, asset, amount, network, purpose, and expiry.
ARM operating term
Authorization
A deterministic decision that a payment intent is permitted under the active mandate and policy; it is not settlement.
Payments term
Settlement
The recorded completion or finalization of value transfer; it does not by itself prove correct resource fulfillment.
ARM operating term
Fulfillment
Delivery of the paid resource or service under the agreed request and acceptance conditions.
Payments operating term
Reconciliation
Matching mandate, intent, authorization, execution, settlement, fulfillment, and exceptions into a reviewable record.
x402 protocol term
x402 client
The application or agent that requests a paid resource and supplies a payment payload meeting an accepted requirement.
x402 protocol term
x402 resource server
The service that describes a protected resource, signals payment requirements, verifies payment, and returns the resource after successful handling.
x402 protocol term
x402 facilitator
A service exposing standardized verification and settlement operations for supported scheme and network combinations.
x402 protocol term
x402 payment requirements
The structured description of a resource and accepted payment choices, including scheme, network, amount, asset, recipient, and timeout.
x402 protocol term
x402 scheme
The logical method used to move value, implemented for a particular network and validated under scheme-specific rules.
ARM-defined
Escalation boundary
The condition at which an agent must stop autonomous action and transfer the decision to a named human or higher-authority control.
Sources and operating paths
- x402 Foundation — protocol specification v2
- IMF — How Agentic AI Will Reshape Payments
- ARM `.com` — strategy pillar
- ARM `.xyz` — implementation guidance
- AI Mastery — technical learning platform
Change history
1.0.0 · August 18, 2026: Initial canonical vocabulary. Future revisions will record changed terms and supporting evidence.