Google has described its strategy for agentic commerce, a shopping paradigm in which AI systems help customers from the point of discovery to the point of purchase. The CEO of Google and Alphabet, Sundar Pichai, introduced the plan, characterizing it as a platform-level change for retail powered by conversational AI.
The announcements cover the launch of the Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP), new AI-based retailer agents, expanded Merchant Center data capabilities, new ad formats in AI Mode, and delivery updates tied to Google’s retail ecosystem.
Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP)
UCP is an open-source standard created to facilitate agentic commerce between shops, payment processors, and customer interfaces. It creates a common language that enables AI agents to communicate with business systems at every stage of the commerce lifecycle, including order management, fulfillment, discounts, checkout, and discovery.
The protocol is compatible with Agent2Agent (A2A), Agent Payments Protocol (AP2), and Model Context Protocol (MCP). It is built to integrate with existing retail infrastructure while reducing the need for one-off integrations between platforms.
More than 20 partners in payments, commerce, and retail infrastructure support UCP, which was co-developed by Shopify, Etsy, Wayfair, Target, and Walmart.
Key characteristics include:
- A single integration layer replacing fragmented platform connections
- Standardized capability discovery and transport mechanisms
- Extensible architecture for future agent-driven use cases
- Tokenized payments with cryptographic proof of user consent
Retailers remain the merchant of record, retaining control over pricing, fulfillment, and customer relationships.
Native checkout in AI-driven shopping experiences
Google is enabling native checkout in conversational interfaces with UCP, which enables customers to finish purchases without exiting the shopping flow.
The checkout experience will appear on eligible product listings in AI Mode in Search and the Gemini app. Transactions are completed using Google Pay, drawing from payment and shipping details stored in Google Wallet. Support for PayPal is planned.
The system also supports retailer-defined logic, including dynamic pricing, loyalty benefits, and personalized offers.
Gemini Enterprise for Customer Experience
Google announced Gemini Enterprise for Customer Experience, a platform designed to help retailers deploy agentic systems across shopping, support, and merchandising workflows.
The platform supports use cases such as digital shopping assistants, customer service bots, agent-powered search, and in-store assistance. It integrates with UCP and is built on open standards to support interoperability across systems.