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PayPal has confirmed that it will support Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP) developed by Google, an artificial-intelligence-driven commerce standard. The new technology is expected to appear soon as a payment option within PayPal’s redesigned checkout experience, according to a press release issued over the weekend.
PayPal’s President and CEO Alex Chriss said on X that the adoption of UCP represents the “next phase” of the partnership between the two companies, which was first announced in September last year. The collaboration is now moving from announcement to practical implementation, with AI becoming a direct component of the payment flow.

Google Unveils UCP as the Foundation of Agentic Commerce
Google officially introduced UCP on Sunday during the annual National Retail Federation conference in New York. Company executives described the protocol as an open, platform-agnostic commerce standard designed to connect artificial-intelligence systems, merchants, and payment providers through a shared “common language.”
The goal of UCP is to enable so-called agentic commerce, where AI agents handle product discovery, checkout, and post-purchase support. At the conference, Google said the protocol marks a significant expansion of autonomous shopping agents across the retail ecosystem.

An Open Standard Designed to Replace Complex Integrations
According to Google, UCP is built to be open and compatible with any credential provider, dramatically reducing the need for one-off integrations between individual AI agents and merchants.
Vidhya Srinivasan, Vice President and General Manager of Google Ads & Commerce, explained in a blog post that instead of requiring a unique connection for each agent, UCP allows all agents to interact seamlessly within a unified framework.
UCP is the second open agentic commerce protocol developed by Google in the past two decades, following last year’s launch of the Agent Payments Protocol (AP2). The company emphasized that UCP is designed to work alongside its other agent-based systems, including Agent2Agent and the Model Context Protocol (MCP).
In the coming months, Google plans to expand UCP with additional shopping capabilities, such as related-product recommendations, loyalty and rewards programs, and highly personalized shopping experiences delivered across its platforms.

PayPal and Major Retailers Helped Shape UCP
Google said the protocol was developed with input from several major retailers and e-commerce platforms, including Shopify, Etsy, Wayfair, Target, and Walmart.
Vanessa Lee, Vice President at Shopify, said the company contributed its extensive experience in building large-scale checkout systems. She noted that Shopify drew on decades of insights from supporting millions of merchants to help ensure that UCP is a robust and scalable commerce standard.

PayPal: Interoperability Is Key to Mass Adoption of AI Commerce
PayPal executives believe that limited interoperability has been one of the main barriers preventing agentic commerce from reaching large-scale adoption. According to Prakhar Mehrotra, Senior Vice President and Head of AI at PayPal, protocols like UCP allow merchants to connect to multiple AI environments at once while maintaining trust, transparency, and control.
Michelle Gill, General Manager of Small Business and Financial Services at PayPal, added that the future of commerce will be defined by how effectively the industry builds open and trusted infrastructure. She said PayPal’s support of, and collaboration with, Google on UCP demonstrates how a trusted payments layer can turn agentic commerce into a real-world experience for consumers.

Analysts Warn of Potential Loss of Direct Customer Contact
Not all industry observers are fully convinced that agentic commerce will succeed without trade-offs. Richard Crone, CEO of Crone Consulting, warned that if checkout flows migrate into AI systems such as Google’s Gemini, merchants could lose their final point of direct contact with customers.
According to Crone, product detail pages are the “fuel” that powers agentic commerce engines. If control over those pages shifts away from merchants’ own websites, retailers may lose leverage—even as Google and Shopify promise increased sales, improved discoverability, and higher conversion rates by enabling off-site selling through AI platforms.

PayPal Expands Its Footprint in Europe and the United States
The UCP announcement follows shortly after PayPal Ventures participated in a funding round for European payments company Klearly, which raised €12 million in a completed Series A round. The investment brought Klearly’s total funding to €20 million, with participation from Italian Founders Fund, Global PayTech Ventures, Antler Elevate, and Shapers. Based in Amsterdam, Klearly processes payments for more than 4,000 merchants and plans to expand deeper into Italy and Belgium.
In the United States, PayPal also strengthened its physical presence in New York by signing one of the city’s largest office leases of the year. The company agreed to a ten-year lease covering approximately 261,000 square feet (around 21,000 square meters) at 345 Hudson Street and 555 Greenwich Street in Hudson Square—a neighborhood that also hosts offices for Google and Disney.

#Paypal , #Google , #fintech , #ArtificialInteligence , #INNOVATION

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PayPal, a giant in the payment sector, is continuing to solidify its position in the digital asset space by expanding PayPal USD (PYUSD) to the Stellar blockchain. This strategic move, pending approval from the New York State Department of Financial Services, promises to bring significant improvements to cross-border payment processes.
PYUSD, launched on #Paypal in 2023 to enter the highly competitive stablecoin market, is now available on the Ethereum and Solana blockchains. The addition of Stellar, a crypto network known for its quick cross-border payment processing and low costs, highlights PayPal's vision of optimizing global value flow.