A structured map of the ecosystem forming around Business-to-Agent interactions. We include real companies and technologies only where they can be accurately sourced, and mark whether each is an established fact or an emerging pattern. This is meant to be worth referencing.
AI assistants & agents
The buying surfaces. OpenAI (ChatGPT), Anthropic (Claude), Google (Gemini), Perplexity, Microsoft (Copilot). These discover, evaluate and increasingly transact for users. Fact
Agent protocols
MCP (agent–tool, Anthropic), A2A (agent–agent, Google), and the Agentic Commerce Protocol (agent checkout, Stripe/OpenAI). Fact
Commerce infrastructure
Shopify, Stripe, Salesforce and Etsy are wiring catalogues and checkout for agents. ACP brings 1M+ Shopify merchants into ChatGPT checkout. Ref Fact
Payments
Google AP2, Visa Intelligent Commerce, Mastercard Agent Pay, PayPal Agent Toolkit, and ACP shared payment tokens. Tokenised, scoped, agent-initiated. Fact
Identity & authentication
Verifying agent, principal and permission scope. An active area: agent-aware tokens (Visa, Mastercard) and consent/mandate models (AP2). Pattern
Product data
Schema.org, product feeds and structured catalogues, the machine-readable facts agents evaluate. The foundation of selling to agents. Fact
Discovery
How agents find businesses: AI search, structured data, crawler access, and llms.txt (Answer.AI). See optimising for AI agents. Pattern
Agent interfaces
APIs, MCP servers and tool endpoints that let agents query and act on a business's systems. Pattern
Measurement & attribution
Attributing agent-driven discovery and revenue as a channel. Nascent, and a core dimension of the B2A Readiness Index. Analysis
Customer service
Agentic support: Gartner expects agentic AI to autonomously resolve a large share of routine service issues by 2029. Gartner Fact
Developer infrastructure
SDKs, toolkits and frameworks (Stripe Agent Toolkit, PayPal Agent Toolkit, MCP SDKs) for building and connecting agents. Pattern
Help keep this current
Spot something missing or mis-sourced? This map is maintained as the field forms.
Follow the research →Sourcing note. Every named company above is linked to a primary announcement or reputable coverage. Where a capability is still rolling out or unevenly adopted, we mark it a Pattern rather than a settled Fact. Corrections welcome.