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Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP)

The Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP) is an open standard designed to enable "Agentic Commerce" — the ability for AI agents to discover products, negotiate, and transact on behalf of users.

Figure: Agentic commerce overview.

Diagram showing agent, merchant, and payment systems connected by UCP.

Why UCP?

In the current web, e-commerce is built for humans using browsers. We have visual storefronts, checkout flows, and customer support chats. However, for an AI Agent to "buy a ticket" or "order a pizza", it currently has to scrape websites or use fragile private APIs.

UCP solves this by providing a standardized way for:

  1. Agents to express intent ("I want a red shirt under $50").
  2. Merchants to expose inventory and capabilities ("I have these shirts").
  3. Transactions to happen securely without a human filling out a form.

Key Concepts

  • Discovery: How agents find merchants.
  • Negotiation: How agents and merchants agree on price and options.
  • Execution: The actual transaction and payment.

Who is this for?

  • Developers: Building AI assistants that need to do more than just talk.
  • Merchants: Wanting to open a new sales channel (AI) without building custom integrations for every AI model.

Next Steps