What is the Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP)?

UCP is an open standard for agentic commerce, announced by Google on January 11, 2026. It gives AI agents, businesses, and payment providers a common language for discovery, cart, checkout, and post-purchase steps, and it works with MCP, A2A, and AP2.

Google co-developed UCP with Shopify, Etsy, Wayfair, Target, and Walmart, and more than 20 other companies endorsed it at launch, including Adyen, American Express, Mastercard, Stripe, and Visa. The specification is open source on GitHub.

Is UCP the same as agentic checkout?

No. Agentic checkout is the experience of an agent buying on a shopper's behalf. UCP is the open protocol that standardizes how the agent and the merchant's backend exchange information to make discovery and checkout work.

Do merchants keep control of the sale under UCP?

Yes. Google and the official UCP site both state that the business remains the Merchant of Record and keeps its customer relationships and data.

How does MessageOS relate to UCP?

MessageOS built UCP detection into its live RCS agent. When a brand tries its brand or store, the agent detects whether the store publishes UCP and displays the capabilities and products it finds in a verified RCS for Business conversation. This is MessageOS's own implementation, not a Google feature.

UCP in RCS: MessageOS Detects and Displays UCP

Q: Does UCP work inside RCS or Google Messages today?

Google's own UCP surfaces are AI Mode in Google Search and Gemini, and Google hasn't announced UCP in RCS for Business or Google Messages. MessageOS built UCP detection into its live RCS agent, so brands can see their UCP data in a branded RCS thread today.

What UCP is

UCP is a shared protocol between three groups: consumer surfaces where people shop with AI (Google names AI Mode in Search and Gemini), the businesses that sell, and the payment providers that move money. Instead of every AI agent needing a custom integration with every store, a business publishes a profile that declares what it supports, and any compatible agent can discover those capabilities and use them.

The building blocks, as described by Google and the official UCP site:

Capabilities: core commerce functions such as catalog search, cart, checkout, identity linking, and order management.
Extensions: add-ons to a capability, such as discounts or loyalty.
Payment handlers: a way to use existing payment providers, with tokenized payments.
Transports: REST APIs, the Model Context Protocol (MCP), and Agent2Agent (A2A). UCP is also compatible with the Agent Payments Protocol (AP2).

How MessageOS uses UCP in RCS

Because a UCP store publishes a profile that declares what it supports, an agent can read it. MessageOS built that into its live RCS agent:

Try your brand. Enter your brand or store at messageos.ai/message.
The agent detects your UCP profile. The MessageOS live RCS agent checks whether your store publishes UCP, and which capabilities it declares.
You see it in RCS messages. The agent displays what it finds, such as your products and UCP capabilities, in a verified, branded RCS for Business conversation in the native Messages app.

Try your brand and see your UCP data in RCS

Who built it, and where the spec stands

Announced: January 11, 2026, by Google, alongside a Shopify engineering post describing how the two companies co-developed it.
Co-developers at launch: Shopify, Etsy, Wayfair, Target, and Walmart, with more than 20 endorsing companies including Adyen, American Express, Best Buy, Mastercard, Stripe, The Home Depot, and Visa.
Spec status: open source under the Apache 2.0 license on GitHub, with dated releases. The most recent release at the time of review is v2026-08-25, which laid groundwork for food and lodging use cases.
Google's rollout: checkout powered by UCP is available in phases through an early access program for eligible U.S. merchants using Google Merchant Center. Google's roadmap lists multi-item carts, account linking for loyalty programs, and post-purchase tracking and returns.

UCP and agentic checkout are not the same thing

Google's Merchant Center help draws a clear line between the two. Agentic checkout is a Google feature in which an agent buys on the customer's behalf, at the customer's direction. UCP is the open protocol that standardizes the exchange of information between the AI agent and the merchant's backend, so discovery and checkout can happen on AI Mode and Gemini. In short, agentic checkout is an experience, and UCP is one standard way to power it.

Shopify's design notes add a practical point: some checkouts can finish entirely through the API, and others need a person to step in because of policy, regulation, or an unsupported step. UCP includes an embedded checkout handoff for those cases.

Why it matters for Shopify and commerce brands

Discovery is moving into AI answers. When the buying step also moves there, the store that exposes clean, machine-readable catalog and checkout data is the one an agent can complete a sale with.
You keep the customer relationship. Google and the UCP site both state that the merchant remains the Merchant of Record and keeps customer data.
Your data has to be ready. Google's implementation starts from your Merchant Center feed, so accurate products, prices, shipping, and return policies come first.
Not every purchase is one tap. Considered purchases, custom orders, and service questions still need a conversation, and that is where the brand's own channel matters.

Where RCS conversations fit in agentic commerce

UCP covers how an AI agent talks to your store. Google's own UCP surfaces are AI Mode in Search and Gemini, and Google hasn't announced UCP in RCS for Business or Google Messages.

MessageOS built UCP detection into its live RCS agent, so brands can see their UCP data in a branded RCS thread today. When a brand tries it, the agent detects whether the store publishes UCP and displays the products and capabilities it finds in RCS messages. This is MessageOS's own implementation, not a Google feature.

MessageOS is an Official Google RBM Partner that launches verified, branded AI agents on RCS for Business, so a customer can move from Google Search or AI Search into a two-way conversation in the native Messages app, with no app download. In that thread the agent can use rich cards, carousels, and suggested replies, and fall back to SMS when a phone can't receive RCS. MessageOS connects to the commerce, CRM, scheduling, payments, and support systems a brand already runs through their APIs and webhooks, and payment, fulfillment, and returns stay in the retailer's own commerce systems.

This page covers detection and display of UCP data in RCS. We will update it when UCP or our implementation changes.

What to do now

Read Google's UCP guide and decide whether to join the early access program through Merchant Center.
Clean up your product feed: titles, variants, prices, availability, shipping, and return policies.
Map which system owns catalog, cart, checkout, and orders, and whether each exposes an API.
Try your brand at messageos.ai/message to see which UCP capabilities the MessageOS live RCS agent detects for your store, displayed in a verified branded thread.
Decide where high-intent shoppers go when they want to talk, not just buy, and make that a verified branded thread instead of a form.

UCP in RCS: How MessageOS Detects and Displays Universal Commerce Protocol in Branded Messages