What is ACP?
The Agentic Commerce Protocol is an open standard that enables conversations between buyers, their AI agents, and businesses to complete purchases.
In plain English: It’s the language that lets ChatGPT shop for you.
What It Looks Like
For shoppers: Find and buy anything using ChatGPT as a personal shopping assistant with trusted, fast recommendations.
For merchants: Reach buyers in the moment, boost conversion, and keep your customer.
Why This Exists
Without a standard protocol, getting ready for each AI agent is a heavy engineering lift. They all work slightly differently. You’d need custom integrations for ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and whatever comes next.
ACP is a bridge. It connects your store to the entire ecosystem of AI agents through one integration. Build once, sell through any AI that supports the protocol.
The protocol was designed around four principles:
| Principle | What It Means |
|---|---|
| Powerful | Connect with millions of AI users and build direct customer relationships |
| Easy to adopt | Connects with your current systems — start accepting orders with minimal effort |
| Flexible | Works across payment processors, platforms, and business types |
| Secure | Protects payment information while giving merchants signals to accept or decline orders |
You Keep Your Customers
This is the part most merchants care about. From the official documentation:
“Merchants own their direct customer relationship throughout the purchase flow.”
That means:
- Customers buy from you directly — not from OpenAI or a marketplace
- Payment flows directly to you — standard processing, no extra platform fees
- You decide whether to accept or decline each order
- You handle the full post-purchase experience — shipping, returns, support
The AI is just a fancy checkout assistant. You’re still the store.
The Three Specs
ACP has three technical specifications that work together:
| Spec | What It Does |
|---|---|
| Product Feed | Tells AI what you sell (titles, prices, availability) |
| Agentic Checkout | Creates and manages orders through the AI |
| Delegated Payment | Handles money securely without exposing card numbers |
If you’re on Shopify or Etsy, this is already handled for you. Custom stores need to implement these APIs.
Payment Security
People ask: “Is it safe to let AI buy things?”
Here’s how it works:
- The AI never sees card numbers. Ever.
- Each payment token is locked to one merchant and one amount
- Buyers approve every purchase before it happens
- Tokens expire quickly and work only once
Stripe calls this “Shared Payment Tokens” — your card stays with Stripe, the AI just gets a one-time voucher for a specific purchase.
Who’s Live Right Now
Instant Checkout is the first product built on ACP. It’s live in ChatGPT for US users buying from Etsy sellers, with Shopify merchants coming soon.
Supported payment methods:
- All major card brands
- Apple Pay
- Google Pay
- Link by Stripe
- More coming soon
Works on: Web, iOS, and Android
Open Source
The Agentic Commerce Protocol is open source under the Apache 2.0 license. That means:
- Any AI agent can use it (not just ChatGPT)
- Any payment processor can support it (not just Stripe)
- Any business can implement it
The code and specs are on GitHub .