The piece most observers are underweighting is the Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP), announced at NRF in January 2026 with 20+ founding partners. This is Google positioning itself as the transaction infrastructure for the agentic web.
This is not just a protocol war—it’s a business model war. Google’s UCP is ad-funded: advertisers pay for visibility through “Direct Offers” (exclusive deals to ready-to-buy shoppers). Merchants retain seller-of-record status and keep full margin. OpenAI’s ACP charges transaction fees per purchase—merchant-funded, not advertiser-funded.
Google’s approach leverages its existing advertising relationships. That’s why the founding partner list reads like a who’s who of retail—merchants keep control.
The Founding Ecosystem
Retail Partners: Shopify, Walmart, Target, Etsy + 16 additional founding partners. Payment Network Endorsements: Visa, Mastercard, Stripe, Adyen, American Express. This is the transaction infrastructure for the agentic web—the layer through which AI agents execute purchases regardless of which agent sits on top.
The Convergence Point
Search (demand + intent signal) + Cloud (transaction infrastructure) + Models (agent intelligence) converge into an entirely new revenuechannel. Google becomes the transaction rails for agent-mediated purchases. Ad-funded model attracts merchants because they keep full margin. Commerce layer monetizes Search + Cloud + Models through a completely new vector.
Gennaro is the creator of FourWeekMBA, which reached about four million business people, comprising C-level executives, investors, analysts, product managers, and aspiring digital entrepreneurs in 2022 alone | He is also Director of Sales for a high-tech scaleup in the AI Industry | In 2012, Gennaro earned an International MBA with emphasis on Corporate Finance and Business Strategy.
