Agentic Commerce Is Here. Google’s Universal Cart May Change How We Shop Forever
Google recently unveiled its Universal Cart and Agent Payments Protocol, signaling a major push into agentic commerce. This new system integrates across Google’s various platforms, allowing AI agents to complete purchases on behalf of users with preset limits. While Google’s move is significant, the article highlights that agentic commerce is a broader industry trend, with players like Visa, Mastercard, and OpenAI also making strides. The technology promises to streamline online shopping, but raises critical questions around trust and identity verification for AI agents.
Google’s foray into agentic commerce, while globally impactful, presents a unique challenge and opportunity for Asia’s tech landscape. The article points out that while Google’s Universal Cart rollout prioritizes Canada, Australia, and the UK, consumer readiness for generative AI in online shopping is remarkably high across APAC, particularly in Indonesia, Thailand, and Singapore. This disparity creates a strategic vacuum where demand for agentic checkout solutions exists, but the primary global player is not yet directly addressing it in Southeast Asia.
This situation forces ASEAN’s superapps and e-wallets, such as Grab, GoTo, GCash, and TNG eWallet, to re-evaluate their strategies. These regional giants already possess many components of a vertically integrated commerce stack—discovery, merchant networks, payment rails, and user identity—that Google is now building. Their options range from rapidly developing their own agentic layers to integrating with global protocols, or adopting a hybrid model. The article strongly suggests that inaction is not a viable strategy, as agentic commerce fundamentally challenges the “walled garden” approach that has historically served these superapps well in Southeast Asia.
