Google announced Universal Cart at I/O 2026, an AI-powered shopping center that lets users add products from Search, Gemini, YouTube, and Gmail to a single, persistent cart with offer tracking and compatibility checks. It also updated the Agent Payments Protocol (AP2) to allow AI agents to make purchases autonomously and expanded the Universal Commerce Protocol to new countries and sectors.
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Universal Cart is designed to be more than just a place to store products. Powered by Gemini, it actively tracks price drops, displays price history, sends restock alerts, and performs AI compatibility checks. For example, a user building a custom PC can add components from multiple retailers and receive automatic alerts if a processor is incompatible with a selected motherboard, along with suggested alternatives.
This capability builds on Google Wallet's existing rewards and loyalty infrastructure and integrates with the Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP), an open standard released by Google in January 2026. UCP creates a common language for AI-driven commerce, enabling purchases to be completed directly through Google or a seamless transition to a merchant's website.
A March 2026 update added cart management, real-time catalog queries, and identity login so shoppers can maintain loyalty benefits when they shop through Google surfaces. Launch partners include Nike, Sephora, Target, Ulta Beauty, Walmart, Wayfair , and Shopify merchants like Fenty and Steve Madden .
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The timing of this announcement is significant. China’s tech giants have already deployed AI shopping agents at scale, with Qwen reaching 300 million monthly active users on Taobao. Amazon recently integrated Alexa directly into its search bar, merging its Rufus chatbot and Alexa+ assistant into a single shopping experience.
Google is clearly struggling to keep up in a market that, according to McKinsey estimates, could reach $5 trillion by 2030. The stakes are huge: whoever controls the default AI purchasing layer has the potential to influence the flow of billions of consumer dollars.
Alongside Universal Cart, Google updated the Agent Payments Protocol (AP2), an open framework first announced in September 2025 with over 60 partners, including PayPal, Mastercard, and American Express. AP2 allows AI agents to make payments on behalf of a user within predefined limits, using cryptographically signed digital contracts called “Instructions” that create an unforgeable audit trail for each transaction.
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The latest version v0.2.0 of the protocol, released in April 2026, introduced “Man Not Present” payments, allowing agents to autonomously purchase items such as limited-edition tickets as they are released. Google has donated AP2 to the FIDO Alliance, signaling its intention to make the protocol an industry standard rather than a proprietary tool.
