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Universal Commerce Protocol Explained

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Universal Commerce Protocol: What Developers Need to Know

Google released the Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP) at NRF 2026. It provides a standard way for AI agents to handle product discovery, cart management, and checkout across merchants. Shopify, Walmart, Target, Visa, Mastercard, and PayPal are early partners. Here is what the protocol does and how it works.

The Problem UCP Addresses

Currently, merchants need separate integrations for each AI assistant where they want to sell. Google AI Mode, ChatGPT, Copilot, and others each require custom work. This creates an N times N complexity problem that slows adoption.

UCP provides a single integration point. Merchants implement once, and any UCP-compatible agent can interact with their store.

Three Core Components

Discovery: Merchants publish capabilities at /.well-known/ucp so agents can find what operations are available.

Capability Schema: Defines operations like Checkout, Orders, Catalog, and Identity Linking. Each capability is versioned independently.

Transport Bindings: Supports REST, MCP, A2A, or embedded JSON-RPC. Developers choose their preferred integration method.

How Checkout Works

An agent creates a checkout session via POST to /checkout-sessions with line items and buyer information. The merchant returns cart state, fulfillment options, taxes, and payment handlers.

Payment handlers separate what buyers use to pay from how payments process. Google Pay, PayPal, and Stripe each publish their own handler specification. Merchants advertise which handlers they accept. This design lets new payment methods join without protocol changes.

"payment": {
  "handlers": [{
    "name": "com.google.pay",
    "version": "2026-01-11",
    "spec": "https://pay.google.com/..."
  }]
}

Completed checkouts integrate with Google Agent Payments Protocol (AP2) for cryptographic consent verification. This provides proof that an agent is acting on behalf of a user.

UCP and MCP Are Different Layers

Anthropic MCP handles general agent-to-tool integration for file systems, databases, and APIs. UCP handles domain-specific commerce operations like cart management, tax calculation, and fulfillment.

UCP supports MCP as a transport binding. Capabilities map directly to MCP tools: create_checkout, update_checkout, complete_checkout. Existing MCP-based systems can add commerce capabilities without architectural changes.

The protocol stack: MCP handles agent-to-tool, A2A handles agent-to-agent, UCP handles commerce transactions. All three use JSON-RPC 2.0.

UCP Compared to OpenAI ACP

OpenAI released Agentic Commerce Protocol (ACP) in September 2025 with Stripe. Key differences:

Scope: UCP covers the full shopping journey. ACP focuses on checkout.

Discovery: UCP uses decentralized discovery at /.well-known endpoints. ACP requires OpenAI approval.

Payments: UCP supports multiple processors. ACP is optimized for Stripe.

Google has an existing merchant base through Google Merchant Center. OpenAI is building its network from scratch.

Current Implementations

Shopify provides Agentic Storefronts in Shopify Admin. Merchants enable AI channels and their products surface with checkout capability. Shopify also opened an Agentic Plan for non-Shopify merchants.

Walmart will surface products in Gemini with recommendations based on purchase history and combined orders across Walmart and Sam's Club.

Target demonstrated conversational product discovery with complete checkout inside the AI interface.

Developer Resources

Specification: ucp.dev

GitHub: github.com/Universal-Commerce-Protocol

Google Guide: developers.google.com/merchant/ucp

The protocol uses date-based versioning. Current version is 2026-01-11. Adding optional fields does not require version changes. Removing fields or changing types does.

For merchants already in Google Merchant Center, adoption requires implementing REST endpoints or MCP/A2A bindings and publishing a capabilities profile. Shopify merchants enable a toggle.

Key Takeaway

UCP provides a standardized protocol for AI agents to conduct commerce operations. Its open-source, decentralized design contrasts with OpenAI's centralized approach. The protocol decisions made now will shape how AI agents interact with commerce infrastructure. Developers building AI agents or commerce platforms should evaluate UCP alongside competing standards.

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