Get ready for agentic commerce: A merchant’s guide to Google’s Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP)

From conversational commerce to agentic checkout

Agentic commerce has arrived as the natural extension of conversational shopping experiences, enabling consumers not only to describe what they want in natural language but also order products — without breaking the flow. This works very well in theory, but in practice, shoppers started their journey on an AI interface and then had to jump to another channel for checkout. 

This is because there has been no standard for how AI agents and eCommerce websites should interact and share information. 

Then Google released the Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP) in January 2026 to solve this fundamental problem. UCP is the missing link that orchestrates checkout, payment and fulfillment on agentic platforms. In practice, retailers that enable UCP will be able to add a checkout button to eligible items within Google’s AI Mode and Gemini. 

More recently, Google announced new features that promise to improve the AI shopping experience, such as Universal Cart coming across Google platforms, including Gemini, YouTube and Gmail. In a nutshell, Universal Cart collects all products added to a cart across retailers and consolidates them into a universal Google cart, so shoppers can see everything in one place. Behind the scenes, the cart works on behalf of the customer, finding deals, price drops, insights on price history and even alerts when items are back in stock.  

Let’s look at what UCP is, what it does and the practical steps brands should take to integrate UCP into their commerce infrastructure. 

What is the Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP)?

UCP is an open protocol that allows AI agents and merchants to exchange information and facilitate secure transactions on behalf of a buyer. UCP establishes a shared language for customers, agents and retailers to support a standardized commerce ecosystem regardless of the customer interface, payment provider or merchant. 

What UCP can do

UCP is designed to:

• Standardize merchant-agent communication.
• Enable AI agents to act on a customer’s behalf in commerce flows, such as placing an order or checking on a shipping status.
• Support a secure, interoperable checkout experience regardless of platform or payment provider.
• Reduce integration complexity for merchants.

Elements in the commerce ecosystem

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UCP vs. MCP

UCP is compatible with existing industry protocols, such as Agent2Agent, the Agent Payments Protocol and Model Context Protocol (MCP). UCP shares similarities with MCP, but differs in purpose and scope. 

While MCP is designed to give AI models structured access to tools, APIs and context across tools and websites, UCP is built for commerce. MCP is the foundational integration layer allowing AI agents to connect with systems, while UCP can operate alongside or on top of MCP frameworks.

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Why UCP matters for brands and retailers

AI is a new discovery channel that allows consumers to browse, compare, and now, buy. According to McKinsey, 50% of Google searches now include an AI summary, and about half of consumers are intentionally turning to AI tools for product research. The next step is direct buying: Gartner estimates that 20% of purchases will take place via AI agents by 2030.

While this won’t replace people buying from your website, it will reduce traffic and discovery via traditional search methods. Brands that fail to optimize their systems for AI search and commerce will remain invisible and miss sales in the fastest-growing commerce channel. 

UCP matters because it allows retailers to capitalize on high customer intent with a fast, convenient and secure transaction.

Opportunities in agentic commerce using UCP

There are many benefits to selling through agentic commerce:

1. Gain a discovery channel. Sell products through AI agents as they become a primary commerce interface alongside search, marketplaces, and social media.
2. Reach high-intent, high-converting customers. Since AI-informed buyers complete more detailed research (“Find X with Y attributes under $Z”), customers arrive on your products much more ready to spend. One study found that AI-referred retail visitors convert 42% more than non-AI visitors. There’s also less friction, since customers won’t be jumping back and forth between different retail websites and search channels.
3. Maintain merchant control. Despite a different buying interface, brands retain control over pricing, inventory and fulfillment logic. Brands can also customize the UCP integration to keep their preferred checkout requirements and needs.
4. Work within your existing commerce infrastructure. UCP is designed to sit on top of existing commerce stacks (PIM, OMS, checkout systems). There’s no need to replace storefronts — you simply add AI agents as a new channel.
5. Launch an AI shopping assistant. In addition to enabling checkout through third-party searches, UCP allows businesses to build their own branded AI shopping assistant for their website or app.

White Paper

Navigating the Agentic Commerce Era On Your Terms

The practical guide to help you approach agentic commerce strategically — not out of FOMO.

Download Now

Challenges and concerns

Of course, this new paradigm means that consumers will interact with your brand in a significantly different way. A shopper using agentic commerce won’t always complete a brand’s native checkout experience and may never visit your website (AKA, zero-click commerce). This raises legitimate questions, such as:

• Will customers trust their data and payment details to a chatbot?
• Will I lose the customer experience I’ve worked so hard to build (website, marketing, checkout, etc.)?
• How does this system prevent fraud?
• Can promotions, membership or loyalty programs integrate with AI commerce?

Google and its collaborators created UCP as the infrastructure to address these concerns. By standardizing protocols and enabling an extensible architecture, UCP lays the foundation for secure, customizable transactions — no matter where they occur. 

How agentic commerce works with UCP

In an agentic commerce flow, UCP enables a structured flow in which AI agents can safely act on behalf of users. At the same time, merchants retain control of their commerce logic and pricing. 

Agent-as-interface

In the past, shoppers conducted product research online via search engines or social media, then navigated to a marketplace or the retailer’s website to complete a purchase. Now, consumers may use an AI tool as their shopping interface from end to end, from discovery to purchase. The AI agent handles product discovery across merchant feeds, recommendations, comparison and checkout orchestration through UCP endpoints.

This is where Google’s Universal Cart comes in. Users can shop from different merchants across the web and check out in a single transaction with a unified cart that checks behind the scenes for deals, price drops and compatibility with other products in the cart. 

Example of a simplified UCP transaction flow

Here’s how UCP facilitates transactions in agentic commerce:

1. User intent: A user expresses purchase intent to an AI assistant, e.g., “Find a wireless keyboard under $100.” 
2. Product discovery: The agent reads your product descriptions, use cases, reviews, and live pricing and inventory — basically, all the homework your customers used to — and chooses whether to recommend it. UCP standardizes this through API, MCP or Agent2Agent. 
3. Checkout initiation: When the user clicks “buy,” the merchant creates a checkout session. Through a modular design, UCP enables universal payments from multiple payment providers that meet its requirements. 
4. Payment authorization: UCP enables a secure, tokenized payment mechanism from the payment provider, allowing the agent to initiate payment without exposing sensitive card data. Every authorization is backed by Google’s cryptographic proof of user consent. Essentially, this creates a digital record and audit trail that the agent is acting on the user’s behalf. 
5. Order completion: The merchant remains the seller of record and handles payment capture, fulfillment and post-purchase flows. 

What brands need to know about UCP

The eCommerce industry needed a protocol for agentic commerce that worked at a global scale regardless of tool choice, and UCP is a critical building block for it. UCP ensures interoperability for all the complex tools needed in a commerce journey: Merchant website, data feeds, payment providers and CRMs. 

What UCP is not

Agentic commerce represents a big shift, but it’s important to recognize what UCP is not.

• UCP is not a marketplace for Google. Retailers remain the merchant of record and retain full ownership over the customer relationship, pricing, inventory and fulfillment logic. UCP is a free, open protocol with no transaction fees, though advertising options will inevitably be introduced in the future. 
• UCP is not a replacement for storefronts. Agentic commerce is a complementary channel, not a substitute for marketplaces or your own direct-to-consumer website. 
• UCP is not a payment provider. UCP does not process or store raw payment credentials. Payments are handled via regulated payment providers using tokenization and secure delegation.

What brands can do today with UCP

UCP enables brands to participate in conversational commerce as a channel, stay visible in AI search, and secure conversions without disrupting customers' search flow. UCP is currently available to select US merchants and will roll out to Canada, Australia and the UK by the end of 2026. If you’re in those markets, here’s what you can expect to do now or in the near future:

• Optimize your products to appear in Google’s Gemini and AI Mode in search.
• Enable a secure checkout button (including multi-item checkout) so customers can purchase from you directly in Gemini and AI mode. Currently, only Google Pay is available, with access to shipping information stored in Google Wallet. 
• Stay in control of what AI agents sell. Brands can define which products are exposed to agents, which categories are eligible for agent-driven checkout, pricing or assortment rules for agent channels. UCP’s modular design means brands can pick and choose capabilities and extensions.
• Integrate loyalty and membership programs. Google’s AP2 identity linking protocol enables brands to integrate their loyalty programs into agentic flows. 
• Launch their own AI shopping assistant with Google Business Agent, like this one from Ulta Beauty. 

What UCP will offer in the future

Google has been clear that this is just the beginning for agentic commerce. It’s investing heavily in commerce capabilities, and here are a few of the coming capabilities:

• Agentic buying directly on YouTube, Gmail or other Google-owned products. 
• Agentic buying within other AI agents, not just Google’s.
• Agentic buying for categories including restaurants, grocery stores and hotels. 
• Fully autonomous shopping. Imagine if you could tell your AI agent, “Refresh my skincare routine every quarter for under $75, cruelty-free products only”. Users will be able to give AI agents directives with criteria, such as restocking or buying new products from brands they love, and the agents can place orders without direct consent.
• AI-powered comparison and recommendation layers embedded in chat interfaces.
• Cross-merchant checkout through Universal Cart. 
• PayPal, Stripe and other payment options. 
• UCP rollout to Europe, Latin America, India and Indonesia.

It’s important to note that agentic commerce is still in the early stages. Fully autonomous shopping is also emerging: Most agentic flows still require explicit user confirmation before they place an order.

The agentic commerce ecosystem is small, with very early adoption across merchants, platforms and AI agents at this stage. As LLM models evolve quickly, the commerce industry is still struggling to understand how agents rank or recommend products. Above all, customers will need to build trust in the new channel. 

However, brands can’t afford to ignore agentic commerce. This channel will ramp up significantly over the next few years. UCP is an important milestone bringing AI shopping from an edge case to mainstream. 

How to navigate UCP with commercetools

UCP promises unified integration, standardization and secure agent transactions. However, the technical integration gap is the biggest hurdle for most merchants. You shouldn’t have to rebuild your commerce stack every time a new protocol comes out. commercetools positions businesses for innovation and agentic commerce with a modular architecture that grows with the industry.

commercetools AI Hub helps brands: 

• Onboard with AI commerce platforms.
• Prepare their product data for AI search.
• Publish readable product catalogs with real-time pricing and inventory. 
• Manage checkout APIs and order management.
• Integrate payment providers. 
• Orchestrate full transaction logic across AI channels.

In addition, AI Hub supports UCP product feeds and checkout in Google’s Gemini.

Finally, Google’s UCP is just one piece of the puzzle. AI Hub orchestrates implementation across Gemini, ChatGPT and Microsoft Copilot, so brands can manage their AI channels from one integrated dashboard. 

Top action steps for brands integrating UCP

While UCP is still new, there’s a lot you can do today to ride the early wave of agentic commerce. Here are the top three action steps that merchants should take in 2026:

1. Monitor the evolution of agentic commerce. If nothing else, stay informed on developments in agentic commerce. Sign up for industry newsletters, attend webinars, and take advantage of any training offered through your eCommerce platform. 

2. Make your commerce infrastructure API-first. Agentic commerce depends on structured, machine-readable commerce APIs to function, which is why the UCP is so valuable to standardize communication between systems. An API-first eCommerce platform like commercetools works a little like LEGO bricks — you can swap, scale and connect new bricks without interrupting or rebuilding your entire system. 

3. Ensure product data is structured and accessible. UCP requires a live data feed to enable agentic checkout — many merchants already publish this via the Google Merchant Center. Brands should also add rich product data to help their products be surfaced and recommended in the first place. Optimize your product data for readability, add use cases and outcome data, and publish real-time inventory and pricing data. 

Above all, merchants should prepare for a new, agent-based discovery and checkout paradigm. In addition to websites that attract, engage, and convert shoppers, brands need to consider agentic access and agentic workflows in their planning. 

With UCP, AI shopping is another way to engage high-intent customers looking for products like yours. It’s a new front door to everything you have to offer. 

White Paper

Navigating the Agentic Commerce Era On Your Terms

The practical guide to help you approach agentic commerce strategically — not out of FOMO.

Download Now

FAQs

What is Google’s Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP)?

UCP is an open protocol that enables AI agents and merchants to securely exchange commerce data and complete transactions.

How does UCP support agentic commerce?

UCP standardizes communication between AI agents, merchants and payment providers to enable seamless AI-driven shopping and checkout.

Can brands control what AI agents sell?

Yes. Merchants can define product availability, pricing rules and checkout logic for AI-driven commerce channels.

How can brands prepare for UCP today?

Brands should adopt API-first commerce infrastructure, optimize structured product data and publish real-time inventory and pricing feeds.

How does commercetools support UCP and agentic commerce?

commercetools enables brands to integrate with UCP through AI Hub, a solution that enables businesses to structure product data for AI discovery, manage checkout and order workflows, integrate payment providers and orchestrate AI commerce experiences across channels like Gemini, ChatGPT and Microsoft Copilot.