Ant International, a leading global payment, digitisation, and financial technology provider, is collaborating on the launch of Google’s Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP), a new open standard for agentic commerce that works across the entire shopping journey — from discovery and buying to post-purchase support.

UCP establishes a common language for agents and systems to operate together across consumer surfaces, businesses, and payment providers to enable commerce. So instead of requiring unique connections for every individual agent, UCP enables all agents to interact easily. UCP is built to work across verticals and is compatible with existing industry protocols like Agent2Agent (A2A), Agent Payments Protocol (AP2), and Model Context Protocol (MCP).

“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,” said Ashish Gupta, VP/GM, Merchant Shopping, Google.

Powered by UCP, AI surfaces — like the Gemini app or AI Mode in Google Search — are evolving. They will soon enable users to complete purchases natively within the chat interface. When a user expresses shopping intent, the AI intuitively understands their needs and presents a curated selection of products. With a single tap on “Pay with GPay,” users can review their order and finalise payment without ever leaving the conversation. Shopping is now faster, simpler, and more frictionless than ever.

“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,” says Jiang-Ming Yang, Chief Innovation Officer, Ant International.

Ant International’s agentic commerce solutions aim to provide merchants with three critical capabilities to scale in AI-enabled commerce:

1. Control over algorithmic engagement

In agentic commerce, engagement shifts from human browsing to AI-mediated decision-making. Ant International enables merchants to remain in control, allowing them to define how their brand, offers, loyalty programs, and memberships are represented and executed by AI agents. Brands can now automate engagement while guaranteeing a customer experience that consistently reflects their brand identity and service excellence.

2. A seamless, agent-native experience

Ant International leverages its deep expertise in alternative payment methods (APMs) and its close ties with leading digital wallets to develop APM-based agentic payment solutions. With the support of Antom EasySafePay, users can remain entirely within their AI experience throughout the shopping and checkout journey.

3. Trust across the agentic shopping journey

Trust is foundational to agentic commerce, where users delegate purchasing authority to AI. Ant International ensures that user intent is verifiable, transactions are traceable, and accountability is clear for every participant across the payment lifecycle. EasySafePay leverages Multi-Party Computation (MPC)-based AI risk management and mobile device security systems to identify and block fraudulent transactions, while also providing a money-back guarantee for payment partners in cases of account takeover fraud.

Ant International focuses on providing payment services to merchants, fintechs and banks. Its global payments services, global account, as well as AI and other fintech solutions now cover 200+ markets, connecting 1.8 billion user accounts and 150 million merchants, especially in the emerging markets of Asia Pacific.

To ensure secure, interoperable, and automated transactions among intelligent agents, Ant International is investing actively to co-develop new agentic protocols with industry partners. Other ongoing parentships include the Agent Payments Protocol (AP2) by Google and programs to pilot card-based transaction capabilities for AI agents with global card networks.

Source: BUSINESS WIRE