Google today announced a new open standard, called the Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP) for AI agent-based shopping, at the National Retail Federation (NRF) conference. The standard, developed with companies like Shopify, Etsy, Wayfair, Target, and Walmart, lets agents work across different parts of customer buying processes, including discovery and post-purchase support. The core idea is that the standard could facilitate these various parts of the process instead of requiring connections with different agents. Google said that it also works with other agentic protocols, such as Agent Payments Protocol (AP2) — which Google announced last year — Agent2Agent (A2A), and Model Context Protocol (MCP). The company specified that Agents and Businesses can pick and choose specific extensions of the protocol that suits their needs. Image Credits: Google The company said that it will soon use UCP for eligible Google product listings in AI mode in search and the Gemini apps to let shoppers check out directly from U.S.-based retailers while researching a product. Users will be able to pay using Google Pay and pass on the …