Thursday, January 15, 2026
Salesforce has announced expanded support for Google’s Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP), taking a major step toward enabling product discovery and checkout directly inside conversational AI experiences. As consumers increasingly rely on AI-powered assistants to explore products and make buying decisions, brands must adapt to meet shoppers wherever those interactions happen.
Over time, customers have moved away from traditional browsing and static checkout flows. Instead, they now expect personalized, context-aware conversations that guide them from discovery to purchase. This transformation became highly visible during Cyber Week 2025, when AI significantly influenced online shopping behavior and helped drive massive holiday sales. As a result, retailers are actively investing in technologies that connect AI conversations with real-time business operations.
To address this shift, Salesforce and Google are expanding their partnership by supporting UCP, an open standard created specifically for the era of agentic commerce. Through this initiative, Salesforce will provide native UCP support for Agentforce Commerce merchants, allowing their products, pricing, and checkout experiences to appear directly within Google’s AI platforms, including AI Mode in Search and the Gemini app.
More importantly, UCP acts as a common technical framework that allows consumer AI models like Gemini to communicate directly with merchant systems. This enables real-time access to inventory availability, loyalty programs, order management, and fulfillment services. Consequently, shoppers can complete purchases without leaving AI-driven conversations, while retailers maintain secure and accurate backend processes.
In addition, Salesforce is simplifying adoption by offering pre-built integrations that reduce development time and integration complexity. This standards-based approach allows brands to launch AI-enabled shopping journeys faster and capture buyer intent at the moment it occurs, improving both conversion rates and customer satisfaction.
At the same time, the protocol supports balanced automation. While AI agents can complete transactions with customer approval, UCP also enables seamless transitions to human merchandisers or customer support teams when personalized assistance is required. This ensures that brands can scale automation while still protecting customer relationships and brand trust.
Through the expanded collaboration, Agentforce Commerce merchants will be able to deliver native checkout and direct purchasing across Google’s AI shopping environments, supported by secure payment options such as Google Pay. Additionally, merchants remain fully in control of merchandising, fulfillment, customer service, and post-purchase engagement as the official merchant of record.
“AI is redefining how shoppers find products and how retailers drive growth,” said Nitin Mangtani, SVP and GM of Agentforce Commerce and Retail, Salesforce. “By natively integrating UCP into Agentforce Commerce with Google’s AI surfaces, we’re helping merchants expand their reach while ensuring they keep full operational control and the direct relationship with their customers.”
“The Universal Commerce Protocol is designed to make it easier for retailers to adopt agentic commerce by providing an open standard for connecting AI-driven shopping experiences to merchant systems,” said Ashish Gupta, VP/GM, Merchant Shopping, Google. “With Salesforce implementing UCP for Agentforce Commerce merchants, more retailers can bring richer product information to shoppers and enable native checkout experiences in AI Mode in Google Search and the Gemini app.”
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