The pace and scale of innovation in the commerce world are rapidly increasing. Merkle predicts that by 2030, nearly a quarter of all commerce will be agentic. Bain predicts that by that same time, the US domestic market could reach between $300M-$500M, representing 15-25% of total online retail sales. 

New developments are quickly turning these predictions into reality and bringing the agentic future into the present. This includes the most recent announcement of a new global standard for how we build commerce agents: the Universal Commerce Protocol. 

Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP) is a new open standard developed by Google in close partnership with other industry leaders, including Shopify. It allows AI agents to move not only through the consideration shopping phase but also to execute a purchase on behalf of a user. 

According to Google, “UCP establishes a common language for agents and systems to operate together across consumer surfaces, businesses, and payment providers.” 

Enterprise organizations no longer need to build separate integrations with each distinct object/action that aligns with every unique AI channel’s requirement. The common protocol creates a shared framework to allow an agent to recognize a standard object/action and move through a workflow accordingly. 

For example, the UCP enables a seller to expose a product catalog so that it’s “optimized” for an agent to scan/shop a product description. Up until now, there’s been a missing piece in the commerce workflow: the ability for a shopping agent to purchase a product on behalf of a customer who previously gave the agent consent to make a purchasing decision. With this recent announcement, retailers can now build and launch agent-to-agent (A2A) capabilities that are completely touchless from a buyer’s perspective.

It’s important to recognize that UCP is not some sort of “Google marketplace” or “super app.” It’s a new standard for building AI agents that allows them to interact with commerce platforms to power the full purchasing experience, from discovery and consideration to payment and post-purchase activities. 

Here are some early clear implications for what UCP enables for enterprise organizations: 

1. A “sell my product everywhere” approach – UCP allows core objects, such as Catalog or Checkout, to be ingested by agents and processed through a common understanding rather than needing to build custom connections for every AI platform. Additionally, retailers remain the Merchant of Record, retaining full customer data ownership and control of post-transaction activity.
   
   
2. Multiple purchasing models – UCP supports multiple shopping models, such as Voice-to-Shop, Conversational Commerce, and embedded in-app, extending options to engage with users. UCP also supports secure payments using tokenization, enabling industry-standard levels of security and allowing merchants to use existing payment integrations with payment handlers.
    
3. Architecture flexibility – UCP supports a wide variety of architecture setups including REST, Model Context Protocol (MCP), Agent Payments Protocol (AP2), or Agent2Agent (A2A) protocols. This allows enterprise organizations to get started immediately by leveraging their existing architecture. 
   
   
4. Dynamic capability negotiation – A key technical innovation is that merchants and agents declare the commerce capabilities they support and the protocol negotiates the difference automatically. No integration meetings between technical teams are needed, and the system adapts based on what both sides can handle. 
   
   
5. Interoperability with Google and Shopify ecosystems, with limited initial adoption – Early signs suggest that there will be feature-rich releases for brands using Google and Shopify, as there is additional capability being developed for future use cases.

It's worth noting that Google's Universal Commerce Protocol is not the only open standard for agentic commerce. OpenAI and Stripe have co-developed the Agentic Commerce Protocol (ACP), which currently powers Instant Checkout in ChatGPT. The key difference is scope: ACP focuses primarily on the checkout layer, enabling AI agents to securely initiate purchases using a merchant's existing payment infrastructure. UCP is designed to standardize the entire commerce journey from product discovery through post-purchase support, including returns, tracking, and loyalty programs. 

For Google, it is important to acknowledge that the entire protocol isn't released yet, so there's room for partners and providers to sweep in with offerings and enterprise brands to innovate in the meantime. 

What we know for certain: the world of commerce is changing, and agentic commerce will only accelerate as consumers grow more comfortable with LLMs and digital wallets become ubiquitous. 

Merkle is here to help you navigate emerging global standards and common protocols. Our team works with brands every day to approach these critical advances with poise and confidence. Reach out to discuss how these changes will impact your business and what steps you can take to stay ahead.