The pace of innovation in retail is incredible, and agentic commerce — where AI completes tasks on people’s behalf — is evolving from a concept to reality. Last year, we introduced agentic tools for shoppers and made agent-led payments seamless and secure with our Agent Payments Protocol (AP2). We believe in an agentic commerce future that is open, collaborative and built for everyone to succeed. Partnering with leading retailers and platforms, we’re sharing several announcements today that are an important step in that journey.
Unlock retail growth with a new open standard
Today, we’re launching the Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP), a new open standard for agentic commerce that works across the entire shopping journey — from discovery and buying to post-purchase support. UCP establishes a common language for agents and systems to operate together across consumer surfaces, businesses and payment providers. So instead of requiring unique connections for every individual agent, UCP enables all agents to interact easily. UCP is built to work across verticals and is compatible with existing industry protocols like Agent2Agent (A2A), Agent Payments Protocol (AP2) and Model Context Protocol (MCP).
UCP was co-developed with industry leaders including Shopify, Etsy, Wayfair, Target and Walmart, and endorsed by more than 20 others across the ecosystem like Adyen, American Express, Best Buy, Flipkart, Macy’s Inc., Mastercard, Stripe, The Home Depot, Visa and Zalando.
