The Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP) addresses a fragmented commerce landscape
by providing a standardized common language and functional primitives. It
enables platforms (like AI agents and apps), businesses, Payment Service
Providers (PSPs), and Credential Providers (CPs) to communicate effectively,
ensuring secure and consistent commerce experiences across the web.
With UCP, businesses can:
Declare supported capabilities to enable autonomous discovery by
platforms.
Facilitate secure checkout sessions, with or without human intervention.
Offer personalized shopping experiences through standardized data
exchange.
Why UCP?
As commerce becomes increasingly agentic and distributed, the ability for
different systems to interoperate without custom, one-off integrations is vital.
UCP aims to:
Standardize Interaction: Provide a uniform way for platforms to interact
with businesses, regardless of the underlying backend.
Modularize Commerce: Breakdown commerce into distinct Capabilities
(e.g., Checkout, Order) and Extensions (e.g., Discounts,
Fulfillment), allowing for flexible implementation.
Enable Agentic Commerce: Designed from the ground up to support AI
agents acting on behalf of users to discover products, fill carts, and
complete purchases securely.
Enhance Security: Support for advanced security patterns like AP2
mandates and verifiable credentials.
Key Features
Composable Architecture: UCP defines Capabilities (such as
"Checkout" or "Identity Linking") that businesses implement to enable easy
integration. On top of that, specific Extensions can be added to enhance
the consumer experience without bloating the capability definitions.
Dynamic Discovery: Businesses declare their supported Capabilities in a
standardized profile, allowing platforms to autonomously discover and
configure themselves.
Transport Agnostic: The protocol is designed to work across various
transports. Businesses can offer Capabilities via REST APIs, MCP (Model
Context Protocol), or A2A, depending on their infrastructure.
Built on Standards: UCP leverages existing open standards for payments,
identity, and security wherever applicable, rather than reinventing the
wheel.
Developer Friendly: A comprehensive set of SDKs and libraries
facilitates rapid development and integration.
Key Capabilities
The initial release focuses on the essential primitives for transacting:
Checkout: Facilitates checkout sessions including cart management and
tax calculation, supporting flows with or without human intervention.
Identity Linking: Enables platforms to obtain authorization to perform
actions on a user's behalf via OAuth 2.0.
Order: Webhook-based updates for order lifecycle events (shipped,
delivered, returned).
Payment Token Exchange: Protocols for PSPs and Credential Providers to
securely exchange payment tokens and credentials.
Getting Started
📚 Explore the Documentation: Visit ucp.dev for a
complete overview, the full protocol specification, tutorials, and guides.