Sales Strategy

Google Sets the Framework for Agent-Led Commerce January 13, 2026 (0 comments)

Mountain View, CA--Retail is increasingly shaped by AI agents that handle discovery, evaluation, and checkout on behalf of consumers. This shift is already changing how people shop and how retailers capture demand. A blog post by Google notes that agentic commerce is moving quickly from concept to active deployment across major shopping surfaces.

[Image via iStock.com/showcake]

Google has been preparing for this transition through agent-led shopping tools and secure payments enabled by its Agent Payments Protocol (AP2). It positions the next phase of commerce as open and interoperable, with shared standards intended to reduce fragmentation between retailers, platforms, and payment providers.

Central to this effort is the launch of the Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP). According to the article, UCP is an open standard that supports the full shopping journey — from discovery through post-purchase — by providing a common language for AI agents and commerce systems. It is compatible with existing protocols such as Agent2Agent (A2A), AP2, and Model Context Protocol (MCP). The article notes that UCP was co-developed with retailers and platforms, including Shopify, Etsy, Wayfair, Target, and Walmart, with support from a wider payments and retail ecosystem.

As outlined in the article, UCP will soon enable checkout on eligible product listings in AI Mode in Search and the Gemini app in the U.S. Shoppers will be able to complete purchases using Google Pay with saved details in Google Wallet, with PayPal support planned. Retailers remain the seller of record and can customize integrations while reducing cart abandonment.

The article also introduces Business Agent, a branded AI agent that allows shoppers to chat directly with retailers on Search. Launch partners include Lowe's, Michael's, Poshmark, and Reebok. In parallel, the article highlights new Merchant Center data attributes to improve discoverability in conversational shopping, and Direct Offers, a new Google Ads pilot that surfaces targeted discounts at high-intent moments.

Read the blog post by Google here.