Three competing protocols are racing to become the standard for AI agent commerce.Google’s Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP) covers the full shopping journey. OpenAI and Stripe’s Agentic Commerce Protocol (ACP) focuses on checkout. Anthropic’s Model Context Protocol (MCP) provides general-purpose AI connectivity.
The winner defines how AI agents interact with commerce for the next decade. Merchants face fragmentation now, consolidation later.
This is TCP/IP for agentic commerce.
Competing Standards for Agentic Commerce
Google: Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP)
Full journey coverage (Discovery → Checkout → Support)
This is a business model war disguised as a protocol war. Googleneeds ads to survive; OpenAI is betting on transaction fees. The protocol that wins merchant adoption defines the economics of agentic commerce for the next decade.
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.
