A Retailer's Guide to AI Shopping Protocols: ACP, UCP, and MCP Explained

Three protocols are going to determine whether your products can be sold through ChatGPT, Google AI Mode, and Perplexity over the next few years. Most retailers I talk to haven't heard of any of them. That's going to be expensive. One thing I learned from building commerce infrastructure is: when new protocols emerge in technology, the companies that implement early get structural advantages that are very hard to close later. The companies that wait until protocols are "mature" find that the market has already moved on without them. We're at that moment in commerce right now. So let me break down what ACP, UCP, and MCP actually do, who's behind each one, and what you should be doing about them today. What Problem Do These Protocols Solve? Right now, if you want to sell through an AI assistant, there's no standard way to do it. Every platform has built its own approach. ChatGPT has one way of handling product discovery and checkout. Google has another. Perplexity has a third. For retail