The big idea is simple: As consumers shop in AI conversations, merchants need a way to sell there without rebuilding their stack for each new assistant or platform.
UCP is designed to provide AI agents with a shared, interoperable way to interact with real world trade. Rather than forcing every retailer to build one-off integrations, the protocol standardizes the way agents handle merchant checkout flows, pricing rules, loyalty programs, and fulfillment requirements.
According to Shopify, UCP already has support from more than twenty retailers and platforms. The protocol supports key payment actions – applying discount codes, selecting subscription terms, confirming final sales terms or handling pre-orders – all within conversational interfaces. It also works with any payment processor, including Shopify Payments.
The goal is flexibility. Whether a purchase is made entirely through chat, through an embedded checkout in an app, or through a web-based flow, UCP is intended to support it without locking merchants into a single ecosystem or transportation method.
Native selling within Google and Microsoft AI experiences
One of the most immediate results of UCP is native checkout in Google’s AI mode in Search and the Gemini app. Shopify sellers can sell directly within these experiences and manage offers, inventory, and performance from the Shopify admin center.
Shopify merchants are also eligible for Google’s Direct Offers pilot, which allows select brands to show exclusive offers in AI conversations – meeting customers when intent is highest, without taking them elsewhere.
On the Microsoft side, Shopify is expanding its Copilot integration with Copilot Checkout, an embedded commerce experience that allows users to make purchases in Copilot. The idea is to condense the path from discovery to transaction into a single conversation flow.
Open agentic commerce outside of Shopify stores
In a notable shift, Shopify is also opening up its catalog to brands that don’t have a Shopify store. Through a new Agentic plan, non-Shopify sellers can list products in the Shopify catalog and use Shopify’s infrastructure to sell through AI channels.
The catalog uses specialized language models to standardize and enrich product data, making it easier for AI systems to surface the right products in response to conversational queries. Sellers set up their data once and Shopify’s Agentic Storefronts distribute it across platforms like ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, Google AI Mode, and Gemini.
For Shopify, this move positions the company less as a storefront provider and more as a commerce layer for the AI era.
Why this matters to marketers
For marketers, agentic commerce is changing the way discovery, persuasion and conversion work. AI assistants don’t scroll through pages like humans do. They synthesize information, make recommendations and increasingly take action on behalf of the user.
That puts pressure on brands to ensure their product data, positioning and offers are structured in a way that AI systems can understand and act on. Shopify’s approach aims to simplify this by providing a unified commerce backbone that works across multiple AI surfaces.
Energize yourself with free marketing insights.
MarTech is owned by Semrush. We remain committed to providing high-quality reporting on marketing topics. Unless otherwise stated, the content of this page was written by an employee or paid contractor of Semrush Inc.
#Shopify #put #commerce #conversation #MarTech