A year ago "buying through a chatbot" meant messaging a sales manager in a messenger. Today the big platforms are building infrastructure in which an AI agent finds a product, compares options and initiates payment on the user's behalf. The market is moving fast and not always in a straight line, so here are the essentials.
What happened in a year
- September 2025. OpenAI and Stripe launched Instant Checkout in ChatGPT and the open Agentic Commerce Protocol (ACP) — first for US users and Etsy sellers.
- September 2025. Google announced the Agent Payments Protocol (AP2) with more than 60 partners. The core idea is signed "mandates" that prove the user authorised the agent to buy.
- December 2025. Shopify's Winter '26 Edition introduced agentic storefronts: merchants' products sell through ChatGPT, with Perplexity and Copilot named next.
- January 2026. At NRF, Google introduced the Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP), developed with Shopify, Etsy, Wayfair, Target and Walmart. UCP works with AP2, A2A and MCP.
- March 2026. OpenAI changed course: the first version of Instant Checkout, the company said, did not offer the flexibility it wanted. Merchants now use their own checkout, and ACP focuses on product discovery.
The takeaway is simple: protocols change every quarter, and it's too early to bet everything on one of them. But the direction is clear — some shoppers will arrive not from search or ads, but from an AI assistant.
The view from Ukraine
According to Prom, Ukrainians spent UAH 256 billion online in 2025 — 7% more than a year earlier — with an average order of UAH 1,320. Delivery infrastructure keeps growing too: Nova (Nova Poshta) delivered 522 million parcels in 2025, and its network reached about 50,000 points.
Agentic protocols are US-first for now, but Ukrainian stores that sell to the EU already follow European rules. Since June 28, 2025, the European Accessibility Act applies: online stores selling to EU consumers must meet accessibility requirements (micro-enterprises with fewer than 10 staff and up to €2 million turnover are exempt). The good news: a store that is accessible to people is usually easier for AI agents to understand as well.
What a store should do now
- Clean up catalog data. Attributes, variants, stock, prices and shipping in structured form, not just in description text. Agents read data, not banners.
- Keep feeds up to date. Google Merchant and other feeds with correct availability and prices are the foundation of any agentic channel.
- Schema.org markup for products, reviews and offers.
- APIs and webhooks. Catalog, orders and statuses should be available via API — then connecting a new protocol means writing an adapter, not rebuilding the store.
- A simple, stable checkout. Fewer steps, clear payment and shipping options, clear error messages.
- Accessibility (a11y). Semantic markup, contrast, keyboard navigation — required by the EAA and a plus for agents.
How we're preparing
In Storeforma, AI agents (Claude, ChatGPT) already connect to a store over MCP: they change the theme, settings and catalog — always as a draft the owner approves. The integration API and webhooks let us add new sales channels without touching the core.
Want to know how ready your store is for new sales channels? We'll audit your catalog data, feeds and checkout and propose an improvement plan.
