Agentic commerce is buying and selling in which an AI agent acts for the shopper, from finding a product through to the purchase. Stripe describes it as buyers browsing products, getting recommendations and completing a purchase without leaving the conversation. Two open standards connect AI services and businesses: UCP and ACP. Google's buying feature is already available to select merchants in the US, Canada and Australia. Other markets, including Japan, are not covered yet, but product data and existing systems can be organized now.
What agentic commerce means
In traditional ecommerce, people search, compare products and buy on the seller's site. In AI search, AI helps with finding and comparing. In agentic commerce, AI is also involved in the cart and checkout.
The biggest change is that the purchase screen can move off the seller's site. Google's Merchant Center help says checkout with UCP happens on Google's surfaces while the business stays the merchant of record.
That term matters. The merchant of record is the party that sells the goods, collects payment and handles refunds and chargebacks. In UCP, the business remains the merchant of record. In ACP, OpenAI is not the merchant of record. AI may become the front door, but the transaction stays with the business.
Why shared standards are needed
If every AI service connects to every business one at a time, the work grows with each new pairing. The UCP specification calls this the "N-to-N" complexity problem for payments and separates payment handling to address it.
With a standard, a business can publish what it supports in a fixed format, and AI services need fewer custom integrations. The path from discovery to purchase has five broad steps.
The actual screens and steps differ by service. A standard defines how systems connect. It does not guarantee that products appear in AI answers, or that they sell.
What UCP is
UCP (Universal Commerce Protocol) is an open standard that aims to be a common language for platforms, agents and businesses. Google announced it on January 11, 2026. It was developed in collaboration with Shopify, Etsy, Wayfair, Target and Walmart.
It covers catalog search and lookup, cart building, identity linking, checkout and order management. The official site lists shopping as live, lodging as a draft specification and food as coming soon.
A business publishes its profile at /.well-known/ucp, and an agent reads it to see which capabilities are available. UCP supports REST and JSON-RPC transports. The latest release is version 2026-08-25.
Its Shopping Tech Council includes people from Google, Shopify, Etsy, Wayfair, Target, Amazon, Meta, Microsoft, Salesforce and Stripe.
What ACP is
ACP (Agentic Commerce Protocol) is an open standard for commerce flows between buyers, AI agents and businesses. Stripe and OpenAI developed it, and the first version was published on September 29, 2025. Its lead maintainers are OpenAI, Stripe and Meta. The specification is in beta, and the latest released version is 2026-04-17.
According to OpenAI's developer documentation, businesses provide a product feed in CSV or JSON, and ChatGPT calls the business's endpoints to create a checkout session. The business's payment service provider handles the transaction. Product feed onboarding is available to approved partners.
It is worth distinguishing the open standard from ChatGPT's consumer features. Instant Checkout, which completed purchases inside ChatGPT, launched in September 2025. In a March 24, 2026 post, OpenAI said the first version of Instant Checkout did not offer the flexibility it wanted, so it would focus on product discovery and let merchants use their own checkout experiences. The same post says ACP now extends to product discovery, with retailers such as Target, Sephora and Best Buy connected.
How UCP, ACP and AP2 differ
UCP covers the journey from discovery to order management. ACP started with checkout and extended to product discovery in March 2026. AP2 is the third name to know.
AP2 (Agent Payments Protocol) is a standard for recording an agent's payment authorization in a verifiable form. It works as an extension for the Agent2Agent (A2A) protocol and the Model Context Protocol (MCP), and it can also be used with UCP. Standardization continues in working groups at the FIDO Alliance.
UCP and ACP are not always an either-or choice. Stripe and Meta take part in both. The practical question is which standards are supported by the AI services you want to sell through and by the commerce system you already use.
What is available as of November 2026
A published standard does not mean shoppers can buy today. The status of the main services is below.
| Service | Where the purchase completes | Availability |
|---|---|---|
| Google (AI Mode, Gemini) | Google's surfaces | Eligible products in the US, Canada and Australia, for select merchants |
| ChatGPT | The merchant's site or app | US users, according to OpenAI |
Japan is not among the countries listed in Google's help article. Taking part requires technical work and an application to Google.
Shopify's March 24, 2026 announcement says products from Shopify merchants can be bought in ChatGPT through an in-app browser, and that desktop opens the store in a separate tab. The flow depends on your commerce platform, so it is best to confirm how it works in your own setup.
What businesses can check now
Google's help article gives no date for buying features in Japan. Four things can still be checked today.
- Product data: check that price, stock and product identifiers are accurate and can be exported as a product feed.
- Existing systems: check whether your commerce or booking platform and payment provider publish plans for UCP or ACP, or API details.
- Merchant duties: refunds, support and chargebacks stay with you for orders that start in AI, so confirm your current support can handle them.
- Eligibility: check regularly whether your region and target service are covered, and whether you need approval.
Clean product data also gives AI accurate information to read. For checking how AI describes your business, see AI Visibility.
Summary
Rather than tracking every protocol name, it is more useful to confirm you could act once your sales region is supported. A sensible first step is checking the accuracy of your product data and the plans of the systems you use.
Outgleam is building a way to connect existing commerce and booking systems to direct orders and bookings from AI. Planned capabilities are on the AI Commerce page, and you can contact us about the systems you use.
