Google has unveiled its Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP), developed in collaboration with over 20 global giants, including Walmart Inc, Shopify, Target, Etsy, Wayfair, Visa, and Mastercard. This move reveals Google’s ambition to dominate the AI agent-driven Zero-Click Commerce market.
According to industry sources on Tuesday, the UCP, announced at NRF 2026, is an open-source standard. It enables AI agents to autonomously handle product searches, payments, and order management, including delivery tracking, without visiting websites.
Google designed the UCP to integrate seamlessly with existing protocols such as AP2 (Agent Payments Protocol), A2A (Agent2Agent), and MCP (Model Context Protocol). This open standard is freely accessible and supports a wide range of payment methods.
Industry experts are hailing this as a paradigm shift, comparable to the development of HTTP and HTML standards in the early days of the internet.
The UCP can be seen as Google’s strategic response to OpenAI’s Instant Checkout feature. Last September, OpenAI partnered with Shopify to introduce a feature that lets users complete purchases directly within ChatGPT’s interface.
For example, if a user asks for running shoes under $100, ChatGPT will suggest products and process the payment within the chat window. OpenAI released this technology, known as the Agentic Commerce Protocol (ACP), as open-source in September.
Shopify’s multifaceted approach is also garnering attention. Last month, the company announced its Renaissance Edition, pledging to make all stores Agent-ready by default. Shopify has formed strategic partnerships not only with OpenAI and Google but also with Microsoft’s CoPilot and Perplexity.
The UCP alliance boasts an impressive roster of over 20 major players, including retail giants Walmart Inc., Target, Best Buy, and Home Depot, as well as fintech leaders such as Visa, Mastercard, Stripe, and American Express.
Notably absent from this alliance is Amazon.
The e-commerce behemoth has chosen to block AI shopping agents from Google and Perplexity on its platform, opting instead for its proprietary chatbot Rufus and Buy For Me agent. In the payments sphere, Amazon has partnered with Visa.
An industry insider commented, “Google’s UCP launch, backed by this formidable alliance, seems to be a strategic move to reclaim its dominance in the shopping market after initial setbacks in the AI race. We expect to see a significant divide between services that effectively leverage AI agents and those that don’t within the next one to two years.”
