The Agentic Commerce Landscape

A map of who is building what in agentic commerce, organized by the layer they operate in. The field is moving quickly, so treat this as a snapshot rather than a fixed picture.

The stack, in one view

Agentic commerce divides into layers, and most organizations occupy one or two of them: the agent surfaces where shopping happens, the commerce protocols that run the shopping journey, the payment-authorization layer that proves you approved a purchase, the networks and processors that move the money, the platforms and merchants that sell, and the standards bodies that steward the open specifications. The map below follows that order.

Who backs each standard

• ACP · CheckoutAgentic Commerce Protocol

  OpenAI and Stripe in founding governance; OpenAI, Stripe, and Meta listed as lead maintainers.

  Apache 2.0
• UCP · CheckoutUniversal Commerce Protocol

  Google, with a Tech Council of Shopify, Etsy, Target, Wayfair, Amazon, Meta, Microsoft, Salesforce, and Stripe.

  Google-led
• AP2 · AuthorizationAgent Payments Protocol

  Created by Google, now stewarded by the FIDO Alliance, with 60+ launch partners.

  FIDO Alliance
• MCP · DiscoveryModel Context Protocol

  Anthropic, now under the Linux Foundation.

  Linux Foundation
• x402 · Settlementx402

  Coinbase, with Cloudflare, now under the Linux Foundation.

  Linux Foundation
• MPP · SettlementMachine Payments Protocol

  Stripe and Tempo.

  Stripe + Tempo

Agent and model providers

These are the surfaces where agentic shopping happens.

OpenAI built the first major in-chat buying experience, Instant Checkout, and co-created the ACP standard. Google is pushing agentic shopping through AI Mode in Search and the Gemini app, and authored both the UCP commerce protocol and the AP2 payments protocol. Anthropic created MCP, the discovery layer the rest of the stack plugs into. Microsoft is building agentic commerce into Copilot, and Amazon joined the UCP Tech Council in April 2026, bringing the largest US retailer-platform into the open-standard camp. Perplexity partnered early with PayPal for in-chat checkout.

Commerce protocols

The standards that define how an agent runs a purchase with a merchant.

ACP (Agentic Commerce Protocol), governed by OpenAI and Stripe as founding maintainers and listing OpenAI, Stripe, and Meta as lead maintainers in MAINTAINERS.md, is the checkout layer. UCP (Universal Commerce Protocol), Google’s standard, covers the broader shopping journey and is ACP’s main rival; it is steered by a UCP Tech Council that doubled to ten members in April 2026 when Amazon, Meta, Microsoft, Salesforce, and Stripe joined founders Google, Shopify, Etsy, Target, and Wayfair. At Google Marketing Live in May 2026 Google extended UCP with named-brand Universal Cart (Nike, Sephora, Target, Walmart, Wayfair, and Shopify merchants) and into new verticals, hotel booking and food delivery. MCP (Model Context Protocol), from Anthropic, is the discovery layer. A2A (Agent-to-Agent) standardizes coordination between agents. See the protocol stack for how they compare.

Payment authorization and trust

The layer that proves a real user authorized a specific purchase.

AP2 (Agent Payments Protocol), created by Google and donated to the FIDO Alliance in April 2026, is the leading standard here, using signed mandates as verifiable credentials. Mastercard’s Verifiable Intent, co-developed with Google and also contributed to FIDO, is a compatible effort. The FIDO Alliance now stewards both. See AP2 explained.

Payment networks

Visa launched Intelligent Commerce in April 2025, with tokenized “AI-Ready Cards,” and led the Trusted Agent Protocol to help merchants tell legitimate agents from bots; in April 2026 it added Intelligent Commerce Connect, a protocol-agnostic acceptance “on ramp” that works across the Trusted Agent Protocol, MPP, ACP, and UCP, with general availability targeted for the end of June 2026. Mastercard launched Agent Pay, built on agentic tokens and payment passkeys, also in April 2025. American Express entered in April 2026 with a developer kit and an industry-first purchase-protection pledge for registered agents. See how AI agents pay.

Processors and providers

Stripe co-created ACP and powers Instant Checkout through its Shared Payment Token, the most concretely live consumer flow; it also co-authored the Machine Payments Protocol (MPP) with Tempo for machine-to-machine payments, joined the UCP Tech Council in April 2026, and supports both MPP and x402. PayPal is both an AP2 partner and an early MCP-server provider, and has adopted ACP. Adyen, Worldpay, Checkout.com, and Braintree appear across the protocol partner lists.

Platforms and merchants

Shopify co-developed UCP and is central to merchant reach. Etsy was the first merchant genuinely live on ACP. Walmart announced ChatGPT buying and is a UCP co-developer. Target, Wayfair, Best Buy, and Macy’s are aligned with UCP. Merchants generally remain the merchant of record across these standards.

Standards bodies and foundations

The FIDO Alliance stewards AP2 and Verifiable Intent. The Linux Foundation hosts the Agentic AI Foundation, which now holds MCP after Anthropic’s December 2025 donation, and the x402 Foundation for the stablecoin rail.

Crypto and stablecoin rails

Coinbase created x402, the HTTP-native stablecoin protocol for machine-to-machine payments, with Circle (USDC), the Ethereum Foundation, and MetaMask in the ecosystem. Google aligned it with AP2 through an x402 extension. Stripe and Tempo added the Machine Payments Protocol (MPP) in March 2026, a second machine-native standard in the same lane that settles in stablecoins as well as cards.

How to read the map

Two patterns are worth noticing. First, the big platform companies are hedging: Stripe and Meta are associated with both ACP and UCP, and Google spans protocols, payments, and a surface. Second, the open standards are consolidating into neutral bodies, FIDO and the Linux Foundation, which is usually a sign a field is maturing past the land-grab phase. For the dated sequence of how this came together, see the timeline.