Google unveils new agentic commerce protocol for retailers

• Key insights: Google unveiled the Universal Commerce Protocol astatine the National Retail Federation's yearly league successful New York connected Sunday.

• What's astatine stake: The Universal Commerce Protocol, oregon UCP is an unfastened modular that establishes a communal connection for agents and systems to enactment together, and volition let consumers to acquisition products from retailers straight done Google's AI Mode successful the browser oregon the Gemini app.

• Forward look: UCP volition initially usage saved outgo accusation from Google Wallet. PayPal volition besides beryllium integrated successful the future.

NEW YORK — Google is rolling retired an agentic commerce protocol for retailers astatine the NRF 2026, the National Retail Federation's yearly normal successful New York, connected Sunday, the exertion elephantine said.

The Universal Commerce Protocol, oregon UCP, is an unfastened modular that establishes a communal connection for agents and systems to enactment unneurotic from find to acquisition to post-purchase support.

UCP volition archetypal service arsenic the backbone of a caller Google checkout diagnostic that volition let consumers to marque purchases successful AI Mode successful the browser hunt and successful the Gemini app. UCP volition initially usage saved outgo accusation successful Google Wallet, with enactment for PayPal payments coming "in the future," according to Google.

"Instead of requiring unsocial connections for each idiosyncratic agent, UCP enables each agents to interact easily," Vidhya Srinivasan, vice president and wide manager of Google Ads & Commerce, said successful a blog post.

UCP is the 2nd unfastened agentic commerce protocol that Google has developed successful arsenic galore years. Last year, Google launched its Agentic Payments Protocol, oregon AP2, which established a payment-agnostic model for users, merchants and payments. UCP besides works with different agentic protocols, specified arsenic Agent2Agent and Model Context Protocol.

Retailers and e-commerce platforms specified arsenic Shopify, Etsy, Wayfair and Target helped co-develop the protocol. Adyen, American Express, Stripe, MasterCard and Visa person besides endorsed the protocol.

"Shopify has a past of gathering checkouts for millions of unsocial retail businesses. We person taken everything we've seen implicit the decades to marque UCP a robust commerce modular that tin scale," said Shopify Vice President Vanessa Lee successful a statement.

Retailers volition stay the merchant of record, and Google plans to rotation retired further features specified arsenic related merchandise recommendations, loyalty and rewards and customized buying experiences connected Google successful the coming months.

With UCP, Google and Shopify are "trying to supply a grade of comfortableness to the merchant that they're going to summation income and discoverability and conversions by supplying their merchandise information to Gemini and Shopify for an off-site sale," Richard Crone, CEO of Crone Consulting, told American Banker.