Shopify is making a decisive move to ensure commerce doesn’t just survive the AI era—it defines it. The company has announced a sweeping expansion of native commerce across major AI platforms, anchored by a new open standard co-developed with Google called the Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP). The initiative positions Shopify as the infrastructure layer for what it calls agentic commerce, where AI agents don’t just recommend products but actively complete purchases on a shopper’s behalf.

This is more than another integration update. It’s Shopify signaling that AI assistants, chat interfaces, and conversational agents are becoming the next dominant storefront—and that it intends to power them all.

Commerce Moves Into the Conversation

AI chats have rapidly become a discovery engine. Millions of users now ask AI tools what to buy, compare products, and plan purchases without ever visiting a traditional ecommerce site. Shopify’s bet is that commerce needs to meet customers inside those conversations, natively and seamlessly.

With UCP, Shopify merchants will soon be able to sell directly within AI Mode in Google Search, the Gemini app, Microsoft Copilot, and ChatGPT, all managed centrally from the Shopify Admin through what Shopify calls Agentic Storefronts. Embedded checkout experiences remove the friction of redirects, logins, and siloed carts—allowing transactions to happen where intent peaks.

This marks a shift from “AI as a referral channel” to “AI as the transaction layer.”

Universal Commerce Protocol: A Shared Language for AI Shopping

At the center of Shopify’s announcement is UCP, an open standard designed to let AI agents connect to and transact with merchants at scale. Co-developed with Google and already endorsed by more than 20 retailers and platforms, UCP aims to solve a growing fragmentation problem: every AI platform currently handles commerce differently, if at all.

Shopify is proposing a shared language that allows agents to understand and execute real-world checkout complexity. That includes applying discount codes, honoring loyalty programs, handling subscriptions, confirming pre-orders, and respecting selling terms like final-sale policies—all within a conversational interface.

Importantly, UCP is payment-agnostic. While it works seamlessly with Shopify Payments, it also supports any payment processor. Under the hood, it’s designed to adapt to diverse commerce stacks using REST APIs, Model Context Protocol (MCP), Agent Payments Protocol (AP2), and Agent-to-Agent (A2A) standards.

For merchants with more nuanced requirements—such as furniture retailers that need delivery date selection—UCP provides a structured way to prompt agents for missing customer inputs without breaking the flow.

In short, Shopify is trying to make agentic checkout as flexible as the real world of commerce itself.

Google AI Mode and Gemini: The First Major Showcase

UCP will power a new generation of native shopping experiences inside Google’s AI products. Shopify merchants will soon be able to sell directly within AI Mode in Google Search and the Gemini app, using embedded checkouts controlled from Shopify Admin.

Google is also introducing a Direct Offers pilot, allowing select Shopify merchants to surface exclusive deals inside AI conversations. The idea is simple: when a shopper expresses high purchase intent in an AI interaction, merchants can respond with the right incentive at exactly the right moment—without leaving the chat.

For Google, this helps close the loop between discovery and transaction. For Shopify, it extends merchant reach into one of the largest AI-driven discovery surfaces on the planet.

Microsoft Copilot Checkout Expands the AI Commerce Map

Shopify is also expanding its partnership with Microsoft through a new Copilot Checkout experience. Users can now shop directly inside Copilot, completing purchases without jumping across tabs or platforms.

As Microsoft positions Copilot as a productivity and planning assistant, commerce becomes a natural extension—especially when users are researching products, organizing events, or managing personal tasks. Shopify merchants stay in control of inventory, offers, and fulfillment, while Copilot becomes another high-intent sales channel.

Brands including Keen, Pura Vida, and Kyte Baby are already using Copilot Checkout, while Monos, Gymshark, and Everlane are preparing to sell directly through Google’s AI experiences.

Shopify Catalog Opens to Every Brand

One of the most strategic shifts in this announcement is Shopify opening its Catalog to brands that don’t run their online stores on Shopify at all.

Through a new Agentic plan, any brand—regardless of ecommerce platform—can list products in the Shopify Catalog, a massive, continuously updated dataset of billions of products. Shopify uses specialized large language models to categorize, enrich, and standardize product data so AI agents can surface the right product instantly, even from ambiguous or conversational prompts.

Once listed, that data flows through Agentic Storefronts and appears across AI channels like ChatGPT, Google AI Mode, Gemini, Microsoft Copilot, the Shop app, and future Shopify partners. Merchants set up their data once; Shopify handles the distribution everywhere discovery happens.

This effectively turns Shopify into a neutral commerce backbone for the AI web—similar to how payment networks operate behind the scenes of traditional commerce.

Why Agentic Commerce Matters Now

Shopify’s push reflects a broader industry reality: AI assistants are evolving from information tools into action-taking agents. They don’t just answer questions—they plan, recommend, and execute.

In that environment, commerce can’t rely on static product pages and search ads alone. It needs to be programmable, conversational, and interoperable across platforms. Shopify’s decades of experience handling checkout edge cases, tax rules, inventory quirks, and global payments gives it a credibility advantage as standards emerge.

Rivals like Amazon, Google, and emerging AI-native commerce startups are all exploring similar territory. But Shopify’s approach—open standards, cross-platform reach, and support for non-Shopify merchants—suggests it’s aiming to be the Switzerland of agentic commerce rather than a closed ecosystem.

From Tools to Infrastructure

Shopify executives describe this moment as a platform shift on par with mobile or cloud computing. Where previous waves focused on storefronts and apps, this one centers on interfaces without screens—conversations that can transact.

By investing in protocols instead of point solutions, Shopify is betting that no single AI assistant will dominate. Instead, commerce will flow across many agents, surfaces, and contexts. UCP is designed to make sure merchants don’t have to rebuild their business logic for each one.

As AI-driven discovery accelerates, Shopify’s role is becoming less about where a store lives and more about how commerce works everywhere.

The Bigger Picture

If successful, Shopify’s strategy could reshape how brands think about customer acquisition, SEO, and paid media. When AI agents handle discovery and checkout in one flow, the line between marketing and transaction blurs. Offers, pricing, loyalty, and product data become just as important as creative messaging.

For merchants, the promise is reach without fragmentation. For shoppers, it’s fewer clicks and more relevance. And for the industry, it’s a signal that agentic commerce is moving from theory to infrastructure.

Shopify isn’t just adapting to AI-driven commerce—it’s trying to define the rules.

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