Google unveiled the Universal Cart in May at the Google I/O event. PYMNTS reported at the time that the Universal Cart is “a cart that shops while you sleep.”
In its Thursday blog post, Google said the Universal Cart is an intelligent shopping cart designed to serve as a hub for shopping on Google.
“The cart puts you in control, helping to organize your shopping, keep track of items you love from across retailers, stay on top of promos and enjoy effortless checkout powered by the Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP),” Google said in the post.
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The Universal Cart enables users to save products from multiple retailers, so that items discovered in AI Mode in Search or in the Gemini app can be found in the same cart; receive notifications when items they’ve saved come back in stock or drop in price; get help choosing the payment method that offers the best card perks; and see relevant promo codes, according to the post.
When the user is ready to buy, some stores will allow them to check out with Google Pay in the cart, while others will help them transfer items to the merchant’s cart to complete checkout on the merchant’s own site, per the post.
“As the holiday season kicks into high gear, the Universal Cart is just one way we’re giving shoppers the convenience and smarts they need to make the best shopping choices,” Google said in the post.
When reporting on the unveiling of Universal Cart in May, PYMNTS said the cart pushes the shopping journey from discovery to price monitoring to checkout inside Google’s surfaces rather than onto the retailer websites built to control it. With the cart, Google positions itself as the orchestration layer above the transaction.
PYMNTS CEO Karen Webster wrote in May that Universal Cart brings together capabilities of Google Wallet, Google Pay and Gemini.
“All of it aimed at positioning Google at the front end of the agentic transaction,” she wrote.
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