Google launches smart digital cart; upgrades Agentic commerce standard
Google continues developing new ways for consumers to leverage Agentic artificial intelligence while shopping.
The tech giant is introducing a new intelligent digital shopping cart called Universal Cart and also adding new features to the Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP), an open standard for agentic AI-based commerce intended to cover the entire shopping journey from discovery and buying to post-purchase support, as well as extending the reach of its agentic payments protocol.
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, and following initial updates in March 2026 has rolled out additional features at its Google I/O 2026 conference in Mountain View, Calif.
[READ MORE: Three tech questions NRF 2026: Retail’s Big Show will answer]
Highlights of Google’s new agentic shopping tools follow.
Universal Cart
Universal Cart is an intelligent agentic shopping cart that works across retailers and Google services including search, Gemini agentic AI platform, YouTube and Gmail. When a customer adds a product to Universal Cart, it automatically begins finding deals and price drops and provides insights on price history and alerts the shopper when an item is back in stock.
The Universal Cart also uses intelligent reasoning to anticipate shopper needs and help solve problems before they arise, such as proactively flagging any product incompatibilities among items bought from different retailers for a single project and suggest alternatives.
Google built the cart on Google Wallet, enabling it to understand payment method perks, loyalty information and retailer offers to help customers choose the most advantageous way to purchase an item. The cart is enabled with Google Pay and compatible for checkout within Gemini at retailers supporting that function.
No matter how a Universal Cart shopper makes a purchase, the brand stays the retailer of record. Universal Cart is rolling out across search and the Gemini app in the U.S. this summer, with YouTube and Gmail to follow.
Universal Commerce Protocol updates
Google is expanding its UCP-powered checkout experience on Google to Canada and Australia in the coming months and later in the U.K. UCP is also coming to YouTube in the U.S. as well as to more verticals, starting soon with hotel booking and local food delivery.
Agent Payments Protocol
Google will be extending the Agent Payments Protocol (AP2), which allows customers to create guardrails for agentic payment transactions, to its own products, starting with its upcoming Gemini Spark personal AI agent. Customers can tell their agent the specific brands and products they want and how much it can spend, and the agent only makes the purchase when preset criteria are met.
AP2 creates a transparent, verifiable link between the shopper, retailer and the payment processor and uses privacy preserving technology to help keep data safe. Tamper-proof digital mandates help ensure the agent is always acting on the shopper’s behalf and provides a permanent digital "paper trail" of transactions that can be used to facilitate returns. Google will begin bringing AP2 to Google products in the coming months.
