Ant International is collaborating with Google on the launch of the Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP), a new open standard designed to facilitate agentic commerce across the entire shopping journey. UCP aims to establish a common language, enabling various agents and systems to operate together across consumer surfaces, businesses, and payment providers. This protocol allows agents to interact easily, rather than requiring unique connections for each individual agent, and is compatible with existing industry standards such as Agent2Agent (A2A), Agent Payments Protocol (AP2), and Model Context Protocol (MCP).
Powered by UCP, AI surfaces like the Gemini app and AI Mode in Google Search are being developed to allow users to complete purchases natively within chat interfaces. When a user expresses shopping intent, the AI understands their needs and presents curated product selections, with purchases finalized via “Pay with GPay” directly within the conversation.
Ashish Gupta, VP/GM, Merchant Shopping at Google, stated, “For agentic commerce to scale, it’s critical for the industry to align on a common set of standards. We are proud to have Ant International endorse the Universal Commerce Protocol as the foundation for that future.” Jiang-Ming Yang, Chief Innovation Officer at Ant International, added, “Ant International is thrilled to deepen our collaboration with Google and support the Agentic Commerce ecosystem. By leveraging our leading payment capabilities, Ant International is creating unique agentic commerce solutions for merchants by delivering merchant friendly, seamless user experience and end-to-end trust, ultimately driving business growth.”
Ant International’s agentic commerce solutions are designed to equip merchants with three key capabilities for scaling in AI-enabled commerce. Firstly, they provide control over algorithmic engagement, allowing merchants to define how their brand, offers, loyalty programs, and memberships are represented and executed by AI agents. Secondly, the solutions offer a seamless, agent-native experience, utilizing Ant International’s expertise in alternative payment methods (APMs) and digital wallet connections. This is supported by Antom EasySafePay, enabling users to remain within their AI experience throughout the shopping and checkout process.
Thirdly, Ant International focuses on trust across the agentic shopping journey, ensuring user intent is verifiable, transactions are traceable, and accountability is clear. EasySafePay integrates Multi-Party Computation (MPC)-based AI risk management and mobile device security systems to identify and block fraudulent transactions, offering a money-back guarantee for payment partners in cases of account takeover fraud.
Ant International provides payment services to merchants, fintechs, and banks, with its global payment services, global account, and AI and fintech solutions covering over 200 markets, connecting 1.8 billion user accounts and 150 million merchants, particularly in emerging markets of Asia Pacific. The company is also actively investing in co-developing new agentic protocols with industry partners, including Google’s Agent Payments Protocol (AP2) and pilot programs for card-based transaction capabilities for AI agents with global card networks.
