Universal Commerce Protocol

Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP) is a protocol designed to provide a standardized framework for agentic commerce across a variety of industries, including shopping, lodging, and food. It addresses the challenge of fragmented commerce experiences by offering a common language and a set of building blocks that enable platforms, agents, and businesses to interoperate without the need for custom integrations. UCP aims to facilitate the entire commerce lifecycle, from product discovery and search through checkout and post-purchase support, ensuring a seamless flow for users and businesses alike.

The protocol supports a range of core capabilities such as catalog search and lookup, cart building, identity linking, unified checkout, and order management. It is built on established industry standards, utilizing REST and JSON-RPC transports, and includes built-in support for Agent Payments Protocol (AP2), Agent2Agent (A2A), and Model Context Protocol (MCP). UCP is designed to be surface-agnostic, supporting multiple modalities like chat, visual commerce, and voice, and is intended to scale to businesses of any size across different sectors. The protocol also emphasizes flexibility, security, and extensibility, allowing for community-driven extensions and capabilities.

0 and secure payment flows using AP2, incorporating payment mandates and verifiable credentials. The protocol features an open wallet ecosystem, enabling interoperability between different payment providers and allowing buyers to use their preferred payment methods. Businesses retain full control and remain the Merchant of Record, maintaining ownership of customer relationships throughout the transaction process.

UCP is open and extensible, with technical specifications, SDKs, and reference implementations available, and is co-developed by industry leaders to ensure broad applicability and adoption. Real-time webhooks are used for order status updates, shipment tracking, and return processing, supporting efficient post-purchase operations. By standardizing commerce workflows and supporting interoperability, UCP seeks to streamline agentic commerce and reduce the friction that leads to user frustration and conversion drop-off.