Read the catalog as it is
Products, variants, price, stock, shipping, reviews, and policies come from the source you already maintain.
One context.
Every rail.
Define your brand once, then compile it to ACP, AP2, UCP, MCP, and Agent Skills as the industry standardizes agent discovery and checkout.
Start freeHow one context becomes every rail.
Build one canonical context
Resolve every product, approved claim, availability rule, and comparison attribute into one semantic model.
Emit every rail
Build ACP, UCP, MCP tool access, and Agent Skills from the same governed source.
Recompile as things move
Price, stock, catalog edits, and protocol changes flow through without separate channel projects.
Four standards, different layers.
ACP
Carries product, cart, payment, buyer confirmation, and an order back into the merchant checkout.
UCP
Represents products semantically for Google surfaces, with live price and availability.
MCP + Apps
Lets an agent search, check stock, show product cards, and hand off a cart within approved scope.
Agent Skills
Packages when and how assistants should call the continuously updated brand agent.
Five standards, one requirement.
The protocols compete; the ground they stand on doesn’t move. Every one of them demands the same asset: machine-readable, field-complete, source-consistent product data.
ACP
OpenAI + Stripe · Apache 2.0, Sept 2025The open Agentic Commerce Protocol (Meta joined as co-developer): a Product Feed spec for catalog data, an Agentic Checkout spec for checkout sessions, and a Delegated Payment spec for secure token hand-off. Pioneered ChatGPT checkout; now powers Microsoft Copilot Checkout.
AP2
Google + 60+ payment partners · FIDO Alliance since Apr 2026The Agent Payments Protocol encodes each purchase as three cryptographically signed mandates — Intent, Cart, and Payment — a verifiable authorization chain. Partners include Mastercard, PayPal, and American Express; donated to the FIDO Alliance for neutral governance.
UCP
Google + Shopify, Target, Walmart, Etsy · NRF, Jan 2026The Universal Commerce Protocol standardizes catalogs, carts, and checkout for agents — powering direct purchase inside Google AI Mode and the Gemini app, with AP2 handling payment authorization underneath.
MCP
Anthropic · Linux Foundation since Dec 2025The Model Context Protocol is the general connection layer between AI and external tools — including merchant systems. UCP and other commerce stacks support MCP as an integration transport.
Instant Buy
Perplexity + PayPal · Nov 2025In-chat purchase inside Perplexity: PayPal handles identity, payment, and buyer protection while the merchant remains merchant of record.
On payment safety: agent payments run on tightly scoped credentials — Stripe’s Shared Payment Tokens are locked to a single merchant, capped in amount, and time-boxed, so the buyer’s card number is never exposed to the agent. The protocols compete at the checkout and payment layer, but every surface they power runs on the same asset: machine-readable, field-complete, source-consistent product data.
Eighteen months from zero to standards race.
MCP released
Anthropic open-sources the Model Context Protocol; Perplexity ships Buy with Pro.
ACP + AP2
OpenAI & Stripe open-source ACP alongside ChatGPT checkout; Google announces AP2 with 60+ payment partners.
Instant Buy
Perplexity and PayPal launch in-chat Instant Buy for US users.
Copilot + UCP
Microsoft launches Copilot Checkout; Google & Shopify announce the Universal Commerce Protocol at NRF.
Neutral governance
AP2 moves to the FIDO Alliance; Google rolls out Universal Cart across Search, Gemini, and YouTube.
Protocol churn belongs in the backend, not your roadmap.
One context graph per brand is compiled and measured per channel. As new rails appear, the approved catalog and policy source stays the same.
Google AI ModeChatGPTMeta agentsTikTokAmazon RufusPerplexity
Questions about the protocol
Pay only when you sell.
One context, every supported rail, your checkout.
Start free