Google has announced a new open standard, the Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP), for AI agent-based commerce, TechCrunch reported on Jan. 11 (local time).

Google unveiled it at a National Retail Federation (NRF) conference and is working with major companies including Shopify, Walmart and Target to expand an AI shopping ecosystem.

UCP is a standard designed to let AI agents operate across the entire shopping process, offering an integrated AI shopping experience from product search to payment and delivery. It is also compatible with Google's Agent Payments Protocol (A2P) and Agent-to-Agent (A2A), which it announced last year, as well as Anthropic's open-source Model Context Protocol (MCP).

Google plans to use UCP in AI Mode Search and the Gemini app to enable direct checkout for products from U.S. retailers. Users can pay with Google Pay and use shipping information stored in Google Wallet, and PayPal will soon be added as a payment option.

To strengthen AI shopping, Google will support brands in offering instant discounts when products are recommended in AI Mode. It will add new data attributes so sellers can be better surfaced in AI search results, and support companies in integrating AI business agents into websites. Lowe's, Michaels, Poshmark and Reebok have already adopted it.