The Many Faces of OAuth 2.0 Token Exchange

This article explores OAuth 2.0 Token Exchange (RFC 8693) and its various applications in modern architectures, examining five key scenarios: administrative impersonation, protocol transitions, service chain delegation, federated identity across security domains, and AI agent access management. The author details Auth0’s implementations including Custom Token Exchange, Token Vault, On-Behalf-Of exchanges, and Cross App Access, explaining how token exchange converts one security token into another appropriate for different contexts.