Conversational commerce and AI agents are advancing at high speed… but in a still very fragmented ecosystem .

In recent months, initiatives have multiplied: ACP, AP2, Agent Pay, MCP, x402…
Each player proposes its own protocol to allow AI agents to interact with payment systems, product catalogs or e-commerce platforms.

As a result, it becomes difficult to see clearly , for both merchants and IT teams.

Who will prevail? Which standards will survive? Which investments are truly sustainable?

In this changing context, one signal deserves particular attention :
When Google invests heavily and pushes a standard, it is never insignificant .

With the launch of   Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP) , supported by major players like Shopify , Walmart or Stripe , Google is not testing a simple experiment.

It lays the foundations for a structuring standard , destined to have rapid and profound repercussions on the e-commerce market .

Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP): an open-source standard for the commerce of tomorrow

UCP is an open source standard designed to allow AI agents to interact natively with e-commerce platforms.

In practical terms, it allows an AI to:

• Explore a product catalog
• Build a basket
• Trigger a secure payment

All this without owner dependencies, and without calling into question your existing architecture.

This choice of open source is key:

• It guarantees the sustainability of the protocol
• It avoids technological confinement
• It enables broad, multi-publisher, and multi-platform adoption.

Why is UCP a strategic lever for merchants?

The UCP is not simply a response to a technological trend. It lays the foundation for a new model of interaction between e-commerce platforms and AI agents:

• A new sales channel: your products become directly purchasable through conversational interfaces and AI agents.
• Standardized and sustainable integration: an open protocol, designed to evolve with uses and future agents, without the need for multiple specific integrations.
• Total control on the merchant side: you remain Merchant of Record (control over prices, payments, customer relations and compliance)
  
  

AI Agents & B2B: A Major Area of Innovation

We are convinced that AI agents will become true accelerators of B2B sales performance, particularly for:

• Navigating complex catalogs
• Manage specific pricing rules
• Recommend compatible or complementary products
• Automate recurring orders
• Supporting the purchasing teams and sales force

Tomorrow, it will not be a single AI agent, but a constellation of specialized agents, deployed gradually, agent after agent, to generate measurable value and performance.

How can we prepare for it in practical terms?

Good news: no need to rebuild your platform.

The UCP is designed to integrate with the modern architectures that we are already deploying for our clients:

• Via your existing APIs: by securely and controllably exposing your catalog, shopping cart, and payment system to AI agents.
• Use Google Merchant Center to make your products shoppable on Gemini and Google Search
• Through partner platforms, some solutions, like Shopify, already offer native integrations. Other vendors, such as commercetools , are also heavily invested in AI to anticipate these new uses.
  
  

Why Smile is investing in AI agents

Open source, composable architectures, business performance: UCP is at the crossroads of all the topics we have been addressing for over 20 years.

SMILE supports SMEs and mid-sized companies in the design of e-commerce platforms:

• Open
• Evolutive
• Ready to integrate the AI uses of tomorrow
  

AI agents are the new augmented shoppers. The question is no longer whether your site will need to interact with them, but when and how .

Do you want to assess the maturity of your platform in relation to AI agents and open source standards like UCP? Let's talk .