Ant International teams up with Google on use of Universal Commerce Protocol

Ant International, the Singapore-based spin-off of Chinese fintech giant Ant Group, has teamed up with Google on standards for artificial intelligence agents that complete online shopping tasks for users, as AI continues to transform the e-commerce sector.

Ant International said in a statement on Monday it would endorse the US search and AI giant’s Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP), an open standard that powers agentic commerce.

“By leveraging our leading payment capabilities, Ant International is creating unique agentic commerce solutions for merchants by delivering merchant-friendly, seamless user experience and end-to-end trust, ultimately driving business growth,” said Jiang-Ming Yang, chief innovation officer of Ant International, in the statement.

With UCP, an AI assistant such as Google’s Gemini can understand the user’s intention for shopping, provide products for selection and finalise the payment when the buyer reviews the order and presses the pay button – all done within the AI conversation.

As part of the UCP endorsement, Ant International said it would give merchants control of how they would be represented by AI agents and allow buyers to make payments within their chats with AI, while providing security throughout the process.