Google Debuts New Ways to Let AI Agents Shop Like Humans

Google has updated its Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP), the agentic commerce standard launched in January.

Since then, the tech giant said on its blog Thursday (March 19), the company has worked with “community contributors” on new options for the UCP.

Among these is a new “Cart” option that lets agents save or add multiple items to a shopping cart at the same time from a single store, “just as a shopper typically would.”

In addition, UCP adopters will be able to access a new Catalog capability that allows AI agents—when necessary—to retrieve select real-time product details from a merchant catalog such as variants, inventory and pricing. And building on existing standards, UCP will also support Identity Linking, Google added.

“That allows shoppers on UCP-integrated platforms to receive the same loyalty or member benefits they would on a retailer’s site when they’re logged in — like pricing or free shipping — making shopping more connected across the web,” the company said.

Google announced UPC in January after developing the protocol in partnership with Walmart, Target, Shopify, Etsy and Wayfair.

As PYMNTS wrote, the protocol moves away from relying on one-off integrations between agents and merchants and comes up with a standard way for AI agents to handle product discovery, checkout and post-purchase support. Merchants can expose inventory, pricing and fulfillment logic via the protocol, thus letting agents carry out purchases without redirecting users to external sites.

“The transition from traditional web or app search to agent-led commerce represents the next great evolution in retail. We aren’t just watching the shift, we are driving it,” John Furner, who was then on the cusp of becoming Walmart’s CEO, said at the time.

Meanwhile, PYMNTS CEO Karen Webster wrote earlier this week about the core challenge facing agentic commerce in this stage of its life.

These models, she argued, are “breathtakingly amazing” at helping consumers research and shortlist their options. However, the infrastructure needed to actually curate all of the available options, and then complete the purchase, is a big gap that hasn’t yet been filled.

“What is billed as a revolution in commerce is, for now, mostly a highly intelligent search bar. A better one than Google. A more conversational one,” Webster wrote. “But still, at its core, a tool that finds the answer and then hands the consumer off to someone else to close the deal.”