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Nicolas Dabene
Nicolas Dabene

Posted on • Originally published at nicolas-dabene.fr

Google UCP: The End of Closed Marketplaces? What It Means for PrestaShop

#prestashop #ecommerce #ai

PrestaShop's AI Upgrade: Decoding Google's Universal Commerce Protocol

Have you ever found yourself building or buying a custom module for every single marketplace integration your PrestaShop store needs? One for Amazon, another for Cdiscount, a third for Google Shopping…

It's a repetitive cycle: bespoke APIs, finicky OAuth authentication, and endlessly clashing data formats. This frustrating reality is often termed the "N x N integration problem," where connecting every entity to every other requires an unmanageable number of custom bridges.

What if there was a way to break free from this exhaustive game? Google might have just provided the answer with its groundbreaking Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP).

Picture your PrestaShop store no longer communicating primarily through a human interface like HTML/CSS, but instead directly engaging with AI Agents (like Gemini or ChatGPT) using a standardized, universal language. This transformative shift is already underway.

🌍 The Evolution of E-commerce: From Storefronts to Agentic Interactions

To fully grasp the significance of UCP, consider the parallel with email communication. Today, it's irrelevant whether you use Gmail and your recipient uses Outlook; the underlying SMTP protocol ensures seamless message delivery.

In e-commerce, the landscape is starkly different. Amazon operates as a walled garden, Shopify as its own digital kingdom, and your PrestaShop store is an independent fortress. To facilitate any exchange, you're compelled to construct expensive, custom digital tunnels.

Google, collaborating with industry titans like Shopify and Walmart, is spearheading the UCP initiative to standardize these fragmented exchanges. The objective isn't to launch yet another marketplace. Instead, it's to forge a common communication framework (built upon open-source standards like Beckn) that empowers any digital touchpoint—be it a search engine, a conversational chatbot, or augmented reality glasses—to:

  1. Discover your product offerings.
  2. Verify real-time inventory levels.
  3. Execute purchases without ever redirecting the user to your traditional storefront.

This paradigm shift is what we call Agentic Commerce. Your customer transitions from being "a user clicking buttons" to "an AI assistant negotiating structured data (JSON) on their behalf."

Simplified diagram of UCP architecture connecting an Agent to a Business Server

⚙️ A Deep Dive into the Protocol's Mechanics

Fundamentally, UCP is not a proprietary platform; it's a precisely defined specification. For PrestaShop developers, it conceptually resembles a standardized REST API, but it operates with a fundamentally different underlying philosophy.

1. The Discovery Manifest

The journey begins with a dedicated JSON file, akin to an advanced robots.txt, residing at your site's root: /.well-known/ucp.

This manifest explicitly declares your store's operational capabilities:

{
  "ucp": {
    "version": "2026-01-11",
    "capabilities": [
      {
        "name": "dev.ucp.shopping.checkout",
        "spec": "https://ucp.dev/specs/shopping/checkout"
      },
      {
        "name": "dev.ucp.shopping.discount",
        "extends": "dev.ucp.shopping.checkout"
      }
    ]
  }
}
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Google's AI systems will parse this file, interpreting it as: "This merchant offers products and supports transactions through the UCP protocol."

2. Defining "Capabilities"

Unlike a monolithic API, UCP adopts a modular design centered around "Capabilities." These are distinct functionalities your store can expose:

  • discovery: Enabling agents to search for specific items, like "Red shoes size 42."
  • checkout: Facilitating the creation of shopping carts and payment processing.
  • fulfillment: Handling order delivery and logistics.

A particularly exciting aspect for developers is UCP's segregation of the payment instrument from the payment processor. An AI agent can present a payment token (perhaps generated by Google Pay on the user's end) to your store. Your existing Stripe or PayPal module, if UCP-compatible, can then process this token seamlessly.

🛠️ Transforming PrestaShop into a "UCP Business Server"

Disclaimer: The concepts and proposed solutions discussed in this section are theoretical, based on my interpretation of the UCP protocol. They have not been tested or validated in a live production environment.

Let's don the hat of a module architect. How do we evolve a PrestaShop instance—traditionally built on PHP to render HTML via Smarty/Twig—into a robust, high-performance UCP server?

This isn't merely about exporting an XML product feed; it demands synchronous, transactional processing.

The Implementation Conundrum

While Google offers a Python SDK, our ecosystem is primarily PHP. This necessitates the development of a "UCP Connector" module, serving as an essential abstraction layer or wrapper.

The proposed module architecture would encompass:

  • Frontend API Controller: A dedicated endpoint, such as /module/ucpconnector/api, specifically designed to receive and respond to AI agent requests.
  • Data Mappers:
    • Mapping PsProduct (PrestaShop's product object) to an Item (UCP Schema).
    • Mapping PsCart (PrestaShop's shopping cart) to an Order (UCP Schema).
  • Strategic Hooks:
    • hookActionProductUpdate: To invalidate any cached agent data if product prices or availability change.
    • hookActionValidateOrder: To seamlessly integrate UCP-initiated orders into the PrestaShop back-office as standard orders.

Illustrative Logic (Pseudo-code)

Consider a scenario where a Gemini Agent requests a price quote for a product:

// Within your UCP Connector module
public function processQuoteRequest($ucpJson) {
    // 1. Parse the AI agent's request (e.g., searching for product ID 12)
    $id_product = $this->mapUcpIdToPsId($ucpJson['item']['id']);

    // 2. Query PrestaShop's real-time stock
    $qty = StockAvailable::getQuantityAvailableByProduct($id_product);

    // 3. Calculate the product price (applying cart rules, customer group discounts, etc.)
    $price = Product::getPriceStatic($id_product);

    // 4. Construct and return the response in strict UCP format
    return [
        'quote' => [
            'price' => [
                'currency' => 'EUR',
                'value' => $price
            ],
            'breakup' => [
                // Detailed breakdown like VAT, shipping charges, etc.
            ]
        ]
    ];
}
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The paramount hurdle here is performance. When Google's AI systems query your site, they demand responses in mere milliseconds. This implies foregoing the loading of extraneous modules and likely opting for highly optimized, lightweight controllers or direct SQL queries for read operations.

🚀 Vision and Anticipated Impact

You might wonder why this experimental protocol warrants your attention now.

The answer lies in the evolving landscape of online visibility. We are witnessing a transition from traditional SEO (Search Engine Optimization) to AIO (Artificial Intelligence Optimization).

In the near future, being "first on Google" won't simply mean having a perfectly crafted meta title. It will mean providing the fastest, most meticulously structured API, enabling Google Assistant to confidently tell a user: "I've found these sneakers at [Your Store], they're in stock, and I can place the order using your Google Pay account right now. Shall I proceed?"

PrestaShop holds an incredibly strong hand in this shift. Its robust and standardized database structure positions it uniquely. Should the community (or a dedicated developer/editor) deliver a reliable UCP module, thousands of PrestaShop stores could instantly become "AI-Ready," gaining a significant advantage over closed SaaS platforms that will inevitably take months to adapt their roadmaps.

Conclusion: Prioritize Your Data Quality

The UCP protocol, while not yet a universal standard, is a powerful indicator of future trends. The trajectory of e-commerce points towards a more decentralized and automated environment.

As we await the emergence of UCP-compatible modules on the Addons Marketplace, your most strategic investment remains the integrity and quality of your product data:

  • Ensure valid EAN/ISBN codes.
  • Maintain clean and consistent product attributes.
  • Guarantee accurate real-time stock levels.

Because when AI agents come to shop at your store, they will demand precision and will not tolerate approximations.

Are you ready to welcome robots making purchases from your store?

Want to dive deeper into e-commerce innovations and future trends? Don't miss out on more insights and discussions!

👉 Connect with me on LinkedIn to continue the conversation.

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