Google announces Universal Commerce Protocol for agentic shopping

Full analysis

Google announced the Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP), an open standard designed to enable AI agents to interact with retailers across the entire shopping journey — from discovery and purchase to post-purchase support. UCP establishes a shared language so agents and retail systems can interoperate without requiring unique one-to-one integrations. It is designed to be compatible with existing protocols including Agent2Agent (A2A), Agent Payments Protocol (AP2), and Model Context Protocol (MCP), positioning it as a cross-industry standard for what Google calls 'agentic commerce.'