AP2 focuses on trust and authorization: a mandate is a signed record of what the user permitted (what, how much, for whom), so a merchant or payment network can verify an agent's purchase was genuinely authorized. It launched with dozens of corporate collaborators.
AP2 (authorization) and x402 (settlement rails) are complementary rather than competing — different layers of the agent-payment stack.
Not directly. AP2 handles authorization via signed mandates; x402 handles programmatic settlement. They can compose in a single agent transaction.