PayPal Joins Google’s AI-Powered Universal Commerce Protocol Initiative
PayPal has officially announced its support for Google's AI-driven Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP), marking a significant expansion of the partnership between the two tech giants. The collaboration, first hinted at in September, will integrate PayPal as a payment option within Google's new AI-powered checkout system. Google unveiled UCP during the National Retail Federation's annual convention, positioning it as an open standard to streamline interactions between AI systems, retailers, and payment providers.
The protocol aims to eliminate the need for custom integrations between individual AI agents and merchants, creating a unified framework for commerce transactions. Vidhya Srinivasan of Google Ads & Commerce emphasized UCP's platform-agnostic design, which accommodates diverse credential providers while maintaining interoperability. This development signals growing institutional momentum behind AI-enhanced payment infrastructure, though specific cryptocurrency implications remain undisclosed.