Five major tech companies have joined the Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP) Tech Council, broadening its membership to include ten organizations spanning various sectors such as retail, payments, cloud infrastructure, and enterprise software.

The UCP was initially founded by Google, Shopify, Etsy, Target, and Wayfair. The expansion of the council now includes new members that bring a diverse range of expertise to the group’s goal of creating a unified technical standard for AI-driven commerce. This encompasses the entire customer journey from discovery to purchase and post-purchase interactions, irrespective of platform or payment method.

Steering Body and Technical Scope

The Tech Council acts as the steering body for the UCP. Its responsibilities include reviewing technical proposals and overseeing the development of the open-source standard. The council aims to ensure that the protocol evolves in a way that benefits businesses, platforms, developers, and consumers at scale.

Without a common protocol, AI agents developed by different companies would operate on distinct specifications, leading to fragmentation within the commerce ecosystem. The UCP seeks to address this issue by providing a shared technical language for agentic commerce interactions across various platforms and payment processors.

The design of the protocol is intentionally broad. As AI becomes more prevalent in product discovery and purchasing, its ability to function consistently across different retailers, payment processors, and commerce platforms will be crucial for smooth transactions.

Industry Alignment

The makeup of the expanded council highlights a cross-sector convergence involving major cloud and software providers, social media platforms with significant commerce capabilities, and Stripe, a key player in payments infrastructure. This council now represents a substantial portion of the global digital transaction processing landscape, including both founding members and new additions.

This wide array of participants suggests that UCP is gaining recognition as a potential industry standard. However, broader adoption beyond the council’s membership will determine its practical impact across the wider developer and merchant communities.

The protocol remains open-source, and all members are actively involved in both its technical development and promotion as an industry-wide standard.