At the National Retail Federation’s Big Show in New York on Sunday, Google CEO Sundar Pichai unveiled the Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP), an open standard that allows AI agents from ChatGPT, Claude, or any other platform to access product catalogues, check real-time inventory, and process transactions through a single integration point.
“Think about all the various steps in your own shopping journey—for an agentic transaction to work, the systems that govern each of these steps have to all line up, they have to talk to each other and be able to act on your behalf,” Vidhya Srinivasan, vice president and general manager of Google Ads and Commerce, explained in a press briefing.
“UCP is a common language. It sits between agent experiences with consumer services on one hand and then the business backend on the other, so that the two can work together seamlessly.”
Damilare Odedina
UCP was co-developed with Shopify, Etsy, Wayfair, Target, and Walmart. More than 20 companies have endorsed it, including Home Depot, Best Buy, Macy’s, Mastercard, Visa, and PayPal. The protocol works with existing industry standards like Agent2Agent (A2A), Model Context Protocol (MCP), and Google’s Agent Payments Protocol (AP2).
“It’s very important to have a standardised way so we can scale these things and everyone can be prepared for all the various steps to happen,” Srinivasan told CNBC. “Businesses can pick and choose what they want so there’s flexibility for them.”
Retail analysts forecast that one-quarter of shoppers will use AI-powered chatbots by 2026, and project the agentic commerce market to reach between $3 trillion and $5 trillion by 2030, according to McKinsey.
UCP will soon power a new checkout feature in Google’s AI Mode and Gemini app, allowing users to complete purchases without leaving the conversation. The system initially uses Google Pay with saved payment and shipping details, with PayPal support coming later. Retailers remain the merchant of record with the ability to customise offers, provide loyalty enrolment, and suggest complementary products.
Checkout Feature (Credit: Google)
Google also introduced Business Agent, a feature that creates branded virtual sales associates within Google Search results. Lowe’s, Michaels, Poshmark, and Reebok are early adopters.
“This is to address the newer consumer behaviour which is shifted toward more conversational commerce,” Srinivasan said. “We want retailers to be able to connect to users on our surfaces but using their own voice.”
Google processed over 90 trillion tokens in December 2025, up from 8.3 trillion in December 2024—an 11X increase year over year. The Shopping Graph now holds more than 50 billion product listings, with over 2 billion refreshed every hour.
The announcement puts Google in direct competition with Amazon, which has been testing similar AI shopping capabilities through Alexa, and Microsoft, which recently unveiled its Copilot Checkout feature.
Despite the infrastructure push, consumer adoption still lags. A ChannelEngine study found that only 17% of shoppers feel comfortable letting AI complete a purchase, even as many already use AI to research products.
The bigger question: whether retailers will adopt yet another protocol in an already fragmented e-commerce landscape, or if Google’s scale and reach will make this the standard that finally sticks. For now, the fact that Walmart, Shopify, and major payment processors are already on board suggests this might be different.
Ejiro Onose
