The pace of innovation in the retail industry is incredible, and agent commerce, where AI completes tasks on behalf of people, is evolving from concept to reality. Last year, we introduced agent tools for shoppers, making agent-driven payments seamless and secure. Agent Payment Protocol (AP2). We believe in a future of agent commerce that is open, collaborative, and built for everyone to succeed. In partnership with leading retailers and platforms, today we are announcing several important steps in that journey.

Unleash retail growth with new open standards

today we launch Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP) is a new open standard for agent commerce that works across the entire shopping journey, from discovery to purchase to post-purchase support. UCP establishes a common language for agents and systems to work together across consumer surfaces, enterprises, and payment providers. Therefore, UCP allows all agents to easily interact, rather than requiring a unique connection for each individual agent. UCP is built to work across a variety of industries and is compatible with existing industry protocols such as Agent2Agent (A2A), agent payment protocol (AP2) and the model context protocol (MCP).

UCP was co-developed with industry leaders like Shopify, Etsy, Wayfair, Target, and Walmart and is endorsed by more than 20 companies across the ecosystem, including Adyen, American Express, Best Buy, Flipkart, Macy’s Inc., Mastercard, Stripe, The Home Depot, Visa, and Zalando.