Google expands capabilities of Agentic commerce standard
Google is updating an open standard originally released in January 2026 to enable a seamless shopping experience using next-gen artificial intelligence.
The tech giant is adding two new capabilities to the Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP), a new open standard for agentic AI-based commerce intended to cover the entire shopping journey from discovery and buying to post-purchase support. Google first announced UCP on the first day of the National Retail Federation’s annual Big Show at the Jacob Javits center in New York City.
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Instead of requiring unique connections for every individual agent, UCP enables all AI agents to interact. UCP is built to work across verticals and is compatible with existing industry protocols like Agent2Agent (A2A), Agent Payments Protocol (AP2) and Model Context Protocol (MCP).
Google has just released two new UCP features:
- A new catalog capability that lets AI agents retrieve select real-time product details from a retailer’s catalog, like variants, inventory and pricing.
- Building on existing standards, UCP will also support identity linking, a feature allowing shoppers on UCP-integrated platforms to receive the same loyalty or member benefits they would on a retailer’s site when they’re logged in, such as pricing or free shipping.
Those retailers adopting UCP can customize the experience they provide by selecting which capabilities to support. Retailers including Walmart and Wayfair are developing agentic AI shopping offerings based on UCP. Walmart and Wayfair both helped Google co-develop UCP, along with other retailers including Shopify, Etsy and Target. Meanwhile, companies including Adyen, American Express, Best Buy, Flipkart, Macy’s Inc., Mastercard, Stripe, The Home Depot, Visa and Zalando have endorsed the standard.
"We built the UCP with the industry as an open standard to help make online shopping easier for everyone," Ashish Gupta, VP/GM, merchant shopping, Google, said in a corporate blog post.
In the coming months, Google will roll out a simplified UCP onboarding process and companies including Commerce Inc. Salesforce, and Stripe will implement UCP on their platforms in the near future.