Protocols
3 articles
Alipay Just Made the Agentic Commerce Protocol Stack 4-Deep
Ant Group launched China's first agentic commerce protocol this week. The agentic commerce protocol stack now has four named entries. If you sell into US, EU, and Asia, you do not get to pick one and ignore the rest. Your catalog has to read cleanly to all of them. TL;DR: Alipay debuted AI Wallet, Token Pay, and the Agentic Commerce Trust Protocol (ACTP) on May 26, 2026, per PYMNTS. That makes four named agentic commerce protocols live in market alongside UCP (Google/Shopify), ACP (Open
Microsoft Just Made UCP Mandatory. ACP Isn't Optional Either.
Microsoft rolled out Universal Commerce Protocol feed support in Merchant Center and Copilot this week, turning what looked like a Google and Shopify side project into a multi-platform standard. Same day, OpenAI shipped a major ChatGPT Shopping upgrade running on the Agentic Commerce Protocol. If you were hoping one protocol would win so you could pick a side, that window closed on April 21. TL;DR: Microsoft adopted UCP in Merchant Center and wired Shopify Catalog into Copilot this week
10 Agentic Commerce Protocols, Zero Interop: The 2026 Guide
There are ten active agentic commerce protocols in the market, and none of them talk to each other. That's what a retailer walks into when they ask their engineering team, "so, how do we get our catalog into AI shopping?" The answer used to be "pick ACP." In April 2026, it is a spreadsheet. TL;DR: Ten agentic commerce protocols are live or piloting in Q2 2026 with zero interoperability. Betting on the wrong one locks you out of specific AI surfaces. This guide sorts them by function (di