UCP (Universal Commerce Protocol)
UCP, the Universal Commerce Protocol, is an open standard that lets AI agents find products, fill a cart and check out with a shop.
UCP, the Universal Commerce Protocol, is an open standard for letting AI agents shop on someone's behalf. It covers the whole purchase: finding products, building a cart, checking out, and what comes after, like tracking and returns. Its own site, ucp.dev, lists Google, Shopify and a long list of retailers and payment companies among the companies behind it.
For a brand that sells online, it's part of the plumbing that decides whether an AI agent can buy from you directly, or has to send the person somewhere else.
What it does
Today, when an AI platform recommends a product, the person usually clicks through to a shop and buys it there. With a protocol like UCP, the agent can talk to the shop itself. It can ask what's in stock, add items to a cart, sign the customer in and pay.
According to the UCP site, the shop stays the merchant of record and keeps the customer relationship. Payments can run through AP2, the Agent Payments Protocol, which UCP supports.
UCP isn't the only standard for this. OpenAI's Agentic Commerce Protocol covers similar ground for buying inside ChatGPT. Which protocols a shop supports may decide which AI platforms can buy from it directly.
An example
For example, someone asks an AI assistant to "get me a bag of medium roast beans under £12, delivered by Friday." If Fernhill Coffee's shop supports the protocol the assistant uses, the assistant can check Fernhill's stock and price, place the order and confirm delivery, all within the conversation. If it doesn't, the assistant can still recommend Fernhill, but it may choose a shop it can buy from directly instead.
What to do now
Ask your e-commerce platform which agent protocols it supports, or plans to. Keep your product data accurate and complete, since an agent can only buy what it can read: names, prices, stock and delivery times.
In AnswerOrbit
Shopping shows the products ChatGPT shows for your prompts, the prices it quotes, and in Merchants, the shops it sends people to buy from.