In his address to the National Retail Federation on January 11, 2026, Google CEO Sundar Pichai introduced the Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP), an open protocol built for agentic commerce. UCP enables native checkout, with buy buttons appearing directly in Google Search’s AI Mode and in Gemini, so a customer can complete a purchase through Google Pay without ever leaving the conversation. Merchants can personalize offers on the spot, such as new-member pricing or loyalty enrollment, while the retailer stays the merchant of record and keeps ownership of the customer relationship. Google says the protocol was co-built with Shopify, Etsy, Wayfair, Target and Walmart, endorsed by more than 20 additional companies, and is being implemented by names including The Home Depot, McDonald’s and Kroger, sitting alongside a Shopping Graph of 50 billion product listings.
The move signals that conversational AI is becoming a real point of sale, where an agent handles discovery, offers and payment in one flow. For Ergonet, whose work spans machine vision and AI-powered commerce and automation, it is a useful marker of how autonomous shopping and selling interfaces are taking shape across the industry.
Source: Google