Overview
- Universal Commerce Protocol is an open standard for agent-led shopping that covers discovery, cart management, checkout and post‑purchase workflows.
- Native checkout is beginning on Google Search’s AI Mode and the Gemini app for eligible U.S. retailers using Google Pay, with PayPal support planned.
- Google co-developed UCP with Shopify, Etsy, Wayfair, Target and Walmart, with endorsements from payments partners including American Express, Mastercard, Stripe and Visa.
- The protocol is transport‑agnostic, supports standard APIs plus Agent2Agent and MCP bindings, and separates tokenized credentials from payment processing so agents never access raw data.
- Industry reaction is mixed as travel stakeholders flag volatility, missing domain fields and potential loss of booking control, even as Google publishes an SDK, sample server and a roadmap that includes multi‑item checkout, loyalty flows and expansion to India, Indonesia and Latin America.