The UCP protocol
UCP, the Universal Commerce Protocol, is an open standard that Google announced on 11 January 2026. It gives AI agents and online businesses one common way to work through the whole purchase: finding the offer, buying it and the support after it.
Brand Design Ltd. in Varna runs UCP on its own domain. Below is what the protocol does, how a purchase goes through it and what you can check on our profile today.
What UCP is
Google developed UCP together with Shopify, Etsy, Wayfair, Target and Walmart, and companies such as Visa, Mastercard, Stripe and Adyen support it. The standard is built to work with the other agent protocols: A2A for communication between agents, AP2 for proof of what the buyer authorised and MCP for tools.
The idea is simple. Instead of every AI platform building a separate integration with every shop, the business describes once what it sells and how it takes payment, and any compatible agent can read it.
How a purchase goes through UCP
The business publishes a profile
The business publishes a machine-readable profile at a fixed address on its own domain, /.well-known/ucp. It lists what the business supports, for example checkout, and which payment methods it accepts.
The agent opens a checkout
The agent reads the profile and creates a checkout with the chosen items. The business answers with the total, the terms and anything that is still missing.
The buyer pays with a token
The payment goes through a payment token, so the agent never sees the card. The business confirms the order and returns its status.
UCP at Brand Design Ltd.
Our UCP profile is published on the merchant’s own domain, branddesign.ltd, in two versions: 2026-08-25 and 2026-04-08. The checkout accepts Stripe shared payment tokens. Google Pay is connected in test mode until Google approves the integration.
Since 9 October 2026 the checkout also accepts AP2 checkout mandates, so an agent can prove what the buyer authorised before we charge anything. The catalogue and the order records are the same as in our ACP profile, our MCP server and our direct API.
What this page does not claim
A UCP profile does not by itself put a business in Google’s AI shopping. Taking part depends on Google’s approval, and our Google Pay connection is still in test mode.
Official sources
Google’s announcement, 11 January 2026
Related pages
- UCP, ACP and AP2: the three protocols of agentic commerce
- The ACP protocol
- The AP2 protocol
- Agentic commerce service
- B2A glossary: terms and protocols
- What is agentic commerce? A live test
Frequently asked questions
What is UCP?
UCP, the Universal Commerce Protocol, is an open standard from Google for agentic commerce. It lets an AI agent find an offer, check out and pay at a business that has published a UCP profile.
Who created UCP?
Google announced it on 11 January 2026 and developed it together with Shopify, Etsy, Wayfair, Target and Walmart.
Is UCP used in Bulgaria?
Yes. Brand Design Ltd. in Varna publishes a UCP profile on branddesign.ltd with a working checkout. The address is public and opens without an account.
What is the difference between UCP and ACP?
Both describe how an agent buys from a business. UCP comes from Google and covers the whole purchase, from finding the offer to the support after it. ACP comes from OpenAI and Stripe and is the protocol behind checkout in ChatGPT. A business can support both, as we do.