ACP (Agentic Commerce Protocol): Definition, How It Works & Examples
The open commerce standard, co-developed by OpenAI and Stripe, that lets AI agents discover products, initiate checkout, and complete a purchase on a merchant's behalf.
ACP, or Agentic Commerce Protocol, is an open standard that enables AI agents, buyers, and merchants to interact through structured commerce workflows. Co-developed by OpenAI and Stripe, ACP helps AI shopping experiences connect with merchant systems for product discovery, checkout, payment authorization, order creation, and purchase confirmation. In simple terms, ACP helps turn an AI assistant from a tool that recommends products into one that can also help customers buy them.
What Is Agentic Commerce Protocol?
The Agentic Commerce Protocol is an open commerce standard designed to support programmatic interactions between AI agents and businesses. Traditional ecommerce requires a shopper to visit a website, browse products, add an item to the cart, enter payment details, and complete checkout manually. Agentic commerce introduces a different model: an AI agent can understand the shopper's request, identify suitable products, communicate with merchant systems, and help execute an approved purchase. ACP provides the standardized communication layer required to make these interactions possible. OpenAI and Stripe introduced ACP in 2025 to support agentic commerce experiences such as Instant Checkout in ChatGPT, designed to work across commerce platforms, payment processors, and different business types while allowing merchants to remain in control of their operations. ACP has also expanded beyond checkout, supporting product feeds and promotions that help merchants represent their products within AI-powered shopping experiences.
How Does ACP Work?
- The shopper expresses purchase intent. The user asks an AI assistant for a product, such as, "Find me waterproof running shoes under $150."
- The AI discovers relevant products. The agent evaluates product feeds, merchant information, prices, availability, specifications, and other structured data.
- The shopper selects a product. The AI presents suitable options, and the customer approves the product they want to purchase.
- The agent initiates checkout. ACP allows the AI platform to communicate with the merchant's commerce backend.
- Order and payment information is exchanged. The merchant receives the information needed to authorize payment and create the order through its existing infrastructure.
- The merchant processes the order. The merchant remains responsible for fulfillment, customer support, returns, and post-purchase communication.
- The purchase is confirmed. The completed order is communicated back to the shopper through the AI experience.
Simple ACP Example
Imagine a shopper tells an AI assistant: "Find me a black carry-on suitcase under $200 that can arrive before Friday." Without agentic commerce, the AI may recommend several products and provide links, and the shopper must then visit a website and complete checkout manually. With an ACP-enabled workflow, the AI could identify matching products, allow the customer to select one, send approved order details to the merchant, initiate payment authorization, and return the order confirmation. The shopper can therefore move from product discovery toward purchase without manually navigating every step of a traditional checkout.
Why Is ACP Important for Ecommerce?
ACP matters because online shopping is moving from human-only browsing toward AI-assisted and agent-driven commerce. Traditional ecommerce often follows this path: Customer → Search Engine → Website → Product Page → Cart → Checkout. Agentic commerce may follow this path instead: Customer → AI Agent → Product Discovery → Recommendation → Merchant System → Purchase. This means ecommerce brands must make their product information understandable not only to human visitors but also to AI systems. Accurate product feeds, structured data, current pricing, clear policies, availability information, and agent-compatible commerce systems are becoming increasingly important.
Why Does ACP Matter for Shopify Brands?
For Shopify brands, ACP connects two important parts of AI commerce: discovery, whether AI platforms can understand and recommend the brand's products, and transaction, whether the merchant can support the customer when an AI agent is ready to initiate a purchase. This aligns with Comergent's broader positioning: helping Shopify brands become visible when shoppers ask ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Gemini, or Copilot what to buy, with a focus that extends from today's AI-generated recommendations to tomorrow's agent-driven purchases. A Shopify store must therefore become discoverable by AI, understandable by AI, recommendable by AI, and ready for agentic purchases. ACP helps support the transaction layer, while AI visibility determines whether the merchant is recommended in the first place.
How Can Brands Prepare for ACP?
- Maintain accurate product titles, descriptions, attributes, prices, and inventory.
- Use structured, machine-readable product data.
- Keep product feeds updated.
- Publish clear shipping, return, and fulfillment policies.
- Make important content accessible to AI agents.
- Strengthen merchant and brand trust signals.
- Prepare checkout infrastructure for agent-initiated transactions.
- Monitor how products appear across AI platforms.
How Comergent Supports AI Commerce
Comergent helps Shopify brands compete in the emerging AI-commerce journey by connecting AI visibility, product recommendations, and measurable ecommerce outcomes. The process can be summarized as: Get discovered by AI → Get recommended by AI → Generate AI-driven demand → Prepare for agentic purchases. For Shopify brands, the opportunity is not only to make AI transactions technically possible, it is to become the merchant AI platforms choose to recommend.