Agentic commerce describes purchases in which an AI agent acts on a person’s behalf to find, compare, and buy products, up to and including payment. The person sets the goal and limits, such as budget, brand, or delivery date, and approves the purchase. The agent handles the steps in between through interfaces to merchants and payment providers.
At a glance
- Type
- purchase handled by an AI agent on a person's behalf
- Open protocols
- ACP (OpenAI, Stripe), AP2 (Google), UCP (Google with retailers)
- Since
- 2025 (AP2 on Sep 16, 2025, ACP on Sep 29, 2025)
- Used in
- AI Mode in Google Search and the Gemini app (checkout via UCP)
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How does agentic commerce work?
An agent has to do three things a shopper normally does on a website. It needs machine-readable product data with price and availability, it has to build a cart with the merchant, and it must trigger a payment that the merchant can trust as the customer’s real intent. Since 2025, several open protocols have appeared for these steps:
- Agentic Commerce Protocol (ACP): released by Stripe and OpenAI on September 29, 2025, open source under Apache 2.0. Merchants keep control of the customer relationship and the transaction, and payment credentials are passed as a token. At launch it powered Instant Checkout in ChatGPT, starting with US Etsy sellers. According to reports, OpenAI scaled Instant Checkout back in March 2026 and now routes shoppers to merchants’ own checkout (TechCrunch, March 24, 2026).
- Agent Payments Protocol (AP2): announced by Google on September 16, 2025, together with more than 60 payment and technology companies. It uses cryptographically signed “mandates” to prove what the user authorized, and it extends the Agent2Agent (A2A) protocol.
- Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP): introduced by Google in January 2026, developed with Shopify, Etsy, Wayfair, Target, and Walmart. It covers the journey from discovery to checkout and order management, is compatible with AP2, and can be integrated through APIs, A2A, or MCP.
| Protocol | Publisher | Connects | Status and version |
|---|---|---|---|
| MCP (Model Context Protocol) | by Anthropic, since 2025-12-09 at the Agentic AI Foundation (Linux Foundation) | AI applications with servers that provide data, tools and prompts | current version 2026-07-28 |
| A2A (Agent2Agent) | by Google, donated to the Linux Foundation; joining the Agentic AI Foundation announced on 2026-08-27 | AI agents from different vendors with each other | specification 1.0 (release v1.0.1 of 2026-05-28) |
| ACP (Agentic Commerce Protocol) | OpenAI and Stripe | buyers and their AI agents with businesses and payment providers | beta, current version 2026-04-17 |
| AP2 (Agent Payments Protocol) | Google; standardisation continues in FIDO Alliance working groups | AI agents, merchants and payment providers for payments on behalf of users | v0.2 (release of 2026-04-28) |
| UCP (Universal Commerce Protocol) | Google with commerce partners (incl. Shopify, Etsy, Wayfair, Target, Walmart) | platforms and AI agents with businesses (profile at /.) | stable, version 2026-08-25 |
| WebMCP | W3C Web Machine Learning Community Group (editors from Microsoft and Google) | websites with AI agents in the browser | draft (Draft Community Group Report of 2026-10-02), not a W3C standard; origin trial in Chrome from version 149 |
| NLWeb | Microsoft (announced 2025-05-19), open source under the MIT licence | websites (Schema.org and RSS content) with users and AI agents; every instance is an MCP server | open-source project without a published version number |
Versions and status as stated in each specification or on the publisher's site, checked on 8 October 2026. These protocols change quickly. MCP, ACP and UCP use date-based versions (YYYY-MM-DD), A2A and AP2 use version numbers. Sources: Model Context Protocol: Specification 2026-07-28; Model Context Protocol: Versioning; Anthropic: Donating the Model Context Protocol and establishing the Agentic AI Foundation (2025-12-09); A2A Protocol: Specification; A2A: A new chapter for A2A, joining the Agentic AI Foundation (2026-08-27); A2A releases (GitHub); Agentic Commerce Protocol (GitHub); AP2: Agent Payments Protocol; AP2 releases (GitHub); Universal Commerce Protocol: Specification overview (2026-08-25); Universal Commerce Protocol; WebMCP: Draft Community Group Report (W3C Web Machine Learning CG); Chrome for Developers: WebMCP (updated 2026-10-07); Microsoft: Introducing NLWeb (2025-05-19); NLWeb (GitHub). Last checked: .
What does agentic commerce mean for online stores and SEO?
An agent can only work with what it can retrieve. That puts the focus on complete, current product information in machine-readable form, delivered through product feeds, structured data, or one of the protocol interfaces. Google names AI Mode in Google Search and the Gemini app as the first places where UCP-based purchases run. Under UCP, the merchant remains the merchant of record.
Example
A user tells an assistant: “Order waterproof trail running shoes in size 8, under $150, delivered by Friday.” The agent queries product data from several stores, filters by size, price, and shipping time, and suggests two pairs. After the user confirms one, the agent creates the cart with that merchant and pays with a token limited to this merchant and amount. The merchant ships the order and stays the seller.
Common mistakes
- Missing checkout attribute in the product feed. Google’s UCP checkout requires the
native_commerceattribute set toTRUE. If it is missing orFALSE, Google treats the product as not eligible for checkout. - Incomplete return policy. Merchant Center needs the return cost, the return window, and a link to the full policy. These details appear on the checkout screen.
- No customer support contact. At least one contact method (website, email, or phone) is required. Google uses it for the “Contact Merchant” link on the order confirmation page.
Frequently asked questions
What are agentic payments? Payments that an AI agent initiates for a user. Protocols like AP2 add proof that the user approved the specific purchase, so the merchant and payment provider can tell an authorized agent from fraud.
Is agentic commerce the same as conversational commerce? According to reports, conversational commerce means shopping through a chat interface where the person still takes each step. In agentic commerce, the agent carries out the steps itself and the person approves the result.
More on the searchVIU blog
Sources
- Developing an open standard for agentic commerce – Stripe Blog (Sep 29, 2025)stripe.com
- Announcing Agent Payments Protocol (AP2) – Google Cloud Blog (Sep 16, 2025)cloud.google.com
- Under the Hood: Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP) – Google Developers Blog (Jan 11, 2026)developers.googleblog.com
- OpenAI's plans to make ChatGPT more like Amazon aren't going so well – TechCrunch (Mar 24, 2026, secondary)techcrunch.com
- Universal Commerce Protocol: Specification overview (2026-08-25)ucp.dev
- Prepare your Merchant Center account – Google for Developers (UCP)developers.google.com
- About the Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP) and UCP-powered checkout feature on Google – Merchant Center Helpsupport.google.com
- AP2: Agent Payments Protocolap2-protocol.org
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