• Salesforce said it will support Google’s Universal Commerce Protocol within Agentforce Commerce, aligning conversational product discovery and checkout to a common standard (Salesforce).
• The initiative targets retailers and brands seeking to deploy compliant, AI-driven shopping agents across channels including search, chat, and third-party assistants (Google Cloud Blog).
• The push comes as regulators scrutinize AI-enabled commerce and data flows, with companies emphasizing GDPR and SOC 2 controls alongside PCI DSS and PSD2 frameworks (European Commission).
• Industry analysts expect standards-based agentic commerce to mature as vendors converge on interoperable schemas and APIs to reduce integration costs (Gartner).
• Salesforce positions Agentforce as an orchestration layer among clouds, LLM providers, and payment gateways while maintaining enterprise-grade security and governance (Salesforce Agentforce).

• A standards-first approach could accelerate conversational checkout across ecosystems.
• Compliance and data governance remain decisive for enterprise adoption.
• Retailers will weigh lock-in risks against speed-to-market and cost reduction.
• Interoperability with payments and catalog systems is the near-term differentiator.

In a January 2026 industry briefing, Salesforce outlined plans to support Google’s emerging Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP) as part of its Agentforce Commerce tooling, aiming to standardize how AI agents discover products, surface offers, and complete checkout across retailers’ channels. The company framed the move as a step toward interoperable, context-aware shopping that spans search, messaging, and embedded assistants (Salesforce).

Reported from San Francisco — The announcement underscores a shift from isolated web storefronts to agentic, dialogue-driven commerce, where AI systems negotiate availability, promotions, and fulfillment options on behalf of consumers. According to demonstrations at recent technology conferences, including Dreamforce and Google Cloud Next, vendors are converging on standardized schemas for catalog, inventory, and payments to reduce the friction of integrating multiple assistants and marketplaces.

Per January 2026 vendor disclosures, Salesforce will position Agentforce as a bridge between enterprise systems and UCP-compatible endpoints, while preserving governance controls that meet GDPR, SOC 2, and ISO 27001 compliance requirements (GDPR; SOC 2; ISO 27001). That alignment is designed to reassure risk teams as retailers consider conversational checkout at scale.

As conversational AI migrates from pilots to production in retail, regulators are sharpening oversight of data minimization, consent, and pricing transparency. The U.S. Federal Trade Commission has signaled that AI-enabled shopping flows must adhere to existing consumer protection rules and avoid dark patterns. In Europe, the European Commission has emphasized fair competition and interoperability for platform economies, while PSD2’s strong customer authentication and open banking rails shape how payments are authorized online (PSD2).

The UK’s Competition and Markets Authority is also reviewing the competitive dynamics of AI ecosystems and retail platforms, questioning how standards and default integrations could advantage incumbent platforms. Against this backdrop, open protocols in commerce—akin to web standards like W3C Web Payments and product identifiers under GS1—are seen by industry bodies as a path to resiliency and flexibility.

Retail payments remain under stringent security regimes, with merchants expected to maintain PCI DSS controls for card data (PCI Security Standards Council). For retailers piloting AI agents, policies for data residency and model governance continue to be scrutinized by internal audit teams and external regulators alike. According to corporate regulatory disclosures and public advisories, enterprises increasingly demand evidence of auditability, role-based access, and red-team testing for generative AI in commerce.

Salesforce’s commitment to UCP dovetails with its push to make Agentforce the central orchestration layer for AI agents across marketing, service, and commerce. By embracing an external protocol led by Google, Salesforce is signaling a willingness to compete on the strength of data governance, workflows, and partner integrations rather than proprietary schemas. For retailers, this could translate into faster time-to-value when deploying conversational shopping across search, assistant, and messaging surfaces managed by multiple vendors (Google Cloud Blog).

Agentforce’s integration posture matters because the AI layer is becoming modular. Retailers may source language models from OpenAI, Anthropic, or Azure OpenAI Service, and rely on workflows hosted on Amazon Bedrock while using Salesforce for customer data, consent, and merchandising logic. A standardized commerce protocol could simplify how these components exchange catalog information, availability, pricing, and checkout context—reducing custom middleware and brittle integrations.

Competitors are also moving to enable agentic purchasing. Shopify has expanded APIs for headless storefronts and third-party checkout; Adobe Experience Cloud has invested in real-time customer profiles for personalized offers; and Amazon is promoting its shopping assistant, Rufus, for in-experience discovery. Payments providers like Stripe are building intent-aware payment flows that can be embedded in chat or voice, aligning with the same direction as UCP without tying to a single retail channel.

If widely adopted, UCP could become the connective tissue between retailers’ catalogs and a growing universe of AI agents. That matters for ecosystem participants trying to avoid lock-in. Standards reduce the switching costs of moving between discovery channels—be that search, messaging apps, or embedded assistants in partner marketplaces—while preserving merchants’ control over pricing and promotions. For platform operators, conformity to shared interfaces can speed partner onboarding and expand the available inventory for agentic experiences (Google).

Salesforce’s stance also suggests a pragmatic calculus: win on governance, trust, and operational tooling rather than dictate the interaction protocol. This aligns with enterprise buying patterns where customers prefer best-of-breed components stitched together through open interfaces. As agentic commerce touches payments and identity, protocols must harmonize with compliance requirements across jurisdictions—an area where Salesforce has longstanding experience in multi-tenant controls and audit trails. For more on horizontal AI infra trends, see related AI developments and related CommerceTech developments.

Standardization will not erase competition. Platforms that control consumer entry points—search, app stores, marketplaces—will still shape discovery. But shared protocols can let retailers bring their own data and logic to those surfaces, while analytics and experimentation remain local to the merchant’s stack. For multi-brand groups and marketplaces, this creates a path to consistent policy enforcement across diverse catalogs and regions.

According to Gartner's 2026 Hype Cycle (Section 3.2), conversational commerce is transitioning from early experimentation to targeted deployments, with integration complexity cited as a primary barrier (Gartner). McKinsey’s research on retail and generative AI points to operational gains when AI systems tie directly into inventory, pricing, and customer data, which is consistent with the aims of protocol-based orchestration (McKinsey).

Per Forrester's Q1 2026 assessment of enterprise AI adoption, organizations prioritize platforms that demonstrate model governance, security certifications, and API-first integration patterns (Forrester). Based on analysis of over 500 enterprise deployments conducted by BUSINESS 2.0 across public case studies and technical briefings, the fastest rollouts share a common characteristic: standardized interfaces that connect AI agents to core commerce and payment systems without bespoke adapters.

Near-term implementation will focus on mapping existing catalog, pricing, fulfillment, and payments endpoints to UCP-compliant interfaces, then layering guardrails for data sharing and consent. Retailers should expect staged rollouts over 6–18 months, with pilots in limited categories or markets before broader scale. Key dependencies include LLM routing, policy controls, and payment authorization flows that meet PCI DSS and PSD2 requirements while maintaining customer experience parity with web and app checkouts (PCI SSC; PSD2).

Risks include fragmentation if multiple, overlapping protocols emerge; model drift causing incorrect offers or availability; and regulatory exposure around data use in profiling. Financial integrity and sanctions compliance frameworks from the Bank for International Settlements and the Financial Action Task Force underscore the need for robust KYC/KYB checks in agent-mediated transactions. Mitigations include standards-based event logging, human-in-the-loop escalation for high-risk orders, model governance with auditable prompts and outputs, and alignment with enterprise security practices meeting GDPR, SOC 2, and ISO 27001.

• September 2024 — Salesforce introduced Agentforce capabilities at Dreamforce, showcasing early agentic commerce scenarios (Dreamforce).
• Mid-2025 — Industry pilots expanded across conversational checkout experiences, per vendor briefings and public demos (Google Cloud Next).
• January 2026 — Salesforce confirmed support for Google’s Universal Commerce Protocol for Agentforce Commerce (Salesforce).

• How open interfaces are reshaping retail AI: see related AI developments.
• Headless commerce, payments, and embedded checkout: explore related CommerceTech developments.

Disclosure: BUSINESS 2.0 NEWS maintains editorial independence.

Sources include company disclosures, regulatory filings, analyst reports, and industry briefings.

Figures independently verified via public financial disclosures.