This isn't vaporware. This is the open-source standard powering agentic commerce at scale. Here's how it works under the hood.
The UCP Shim sits between your existing eCommerce backend and the constellation of AI agents.
/.well-known/ucp Endpoint
Just as robots.txt tells search crawlers how to index your site,
/.well-known/ucp tells AI agents how to transact with your business.
When an agent lands on your domain, it first checks this discovery endpoint. The JSON manifest declares your supported capabilities, payment options, and service profiles—allowing agents to dynamically understand what you offer without any hard-coded integrations.
{
"ucp_version": "1.0",
"business": {
"name": "Example Retailer",
"merchant_of_record": true
},
"capabilities": [
"product_discovery",
"checkout",
"order_management"
],
"extensions": ["discounts", "loyalty"],
"payment_handlers": [...],
"transports": ["a2a", "mcp", "rest"]
}Your customer data never touches our servers. We implement the protocol layer—you own the data layer.
Industry-standard authorization. Agents authenticate through your existing identity provider. No new credentials to manage.
Every authorization is backed by cryptographic proof of user consent. Tamper-proof, auditable, dispute-ready.
Payment credentials are tokenized, not shared. Agents can transact without ever seeing raw card data.
Commerce primitives: discovery, checkout, orders, payments, extensions.
Agent-to-Agent protocol for multi-agent coordination and task delegation.
Model Context Protocol for tool invocation and capability binding.
Agent Payments Protocol for secure payment mandates and verifiable credentials.
Get a technical assessment of your current architecture and a clear path to UCP integration.
Run a UCP Audit