ACP vs UCP: two agentic commerce protocols, and why 'which one' is the wrong question

Short summary

ACP (OpenAI/Stripe) and UCP (Google) are not competing standards — ACP has evolved into a discovery/product-feed protocol for ChatGPT, while UCP handles live agentic checkout across Google surfaces. Both demand the same backend foundations: clean product data, real-time stock, machine-readable policies, and server-side structured data. The practical advice is to ship catalog hygiene first, implement the ACP feed, prepare the UCP manifest, and make a deliberate checkout decision since agents cannot tokenize cards in backend contexts.

• •ACP and UCP sit at different layers — ACP is discovery/feed, UCP is discovery plus agentic checkout — so 'pick one' is the wrong question
• •Both protocols require the same catalog hygiene: clean SKUs, real-time stock, machine-readable policies, server-side structured data
• •Implement in phases: foundations first, ACP feed second, UCP manifest third, then decide on checkout deliberately given PCI-compliance constraints

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