Learn / Protocols and standards
Implementing the Agentic Commerce Protocol
The Agentic Commerce Protocol was published by OpenAI and Stripe on 29 September 2025 under Apache 2.0. It standardises how an agent, a merchant and a payment provider agree on a purchase, and it is implemented predominantly by platforms and payment providers rather than by individual stores, which means most merchants encounter it as a set of catalogue requirements rather than as an integration.
OpenAI and Stripe published the first version of the Agentic Commerce Protocol on 29 September 2025 under Apache 2.0, according to the protocol’s own repository. It standardises how an agent, a merchant and a payment provider agree on what is being bought and how it will be paid for.
Who implements it
Predominantly platforms and payment providers. That is not a limitation, it is the design: a specification adopted by the layer that already holds the catalogue and the payment relationship reaches far more merchants than one adopted store by store.
For a merchant on a hosted platform, ACP is encountered as a set of requirements rather than as an integration project. See do you need to adopt a commerce protocol at all.
What it needs from you
- A price that matches what a shopper actually pays, including discounts applied at render.
- Availability at variant level, accurate when the answer is no.
- An identifier so your item can be matched to the same product elsewhere.
- Terms readable before checkout, particularly shipping and returns.
If any of these is missing, adoption changes nothing: the protocol transmits data you have not published.
If you are implementing directly
Read the specification itself rather than a summary, since it is public and it moves. Then treat your catalogue as the prerequisite rather than the integration: an implementation on top of unpublished prices produces a correct exchange of unusable information.
Where it sits among the others
ACP is one of four names a merchant meets, alongside UCP, AP2 and MCP, and they overlap rather than compete cleanly. See ACP, UCP, AP2 and MCP explained and implementing the Universal Commerce Protocol.
Questions
Do I implement this myself?
Only on a custom stack, or where you are your own payment provider. On a hosted platform you inherit whatever it supports, and your work is the catalogue and policy data it needs from you.
Is it open?
The protocol’s own repository states it was published under Apache 2.0, which is what makes independent implementation possible rather than requiring a commercial relationship.
What does it require from my catalogue?
The same things every channel requires: a price that matches what is paid, availability at variant level, an identifier, and terms that can be read before checkout. Get those right and the protocol layer has something to carry.