ACP is an open, Apache 2.0-licensed standard created by Stripe, OpenAI, and Meta, launched September 29, 2025. It is made of three specs: a Product Feed Spec for sharing a catalog, an Agentic Checkout Spec defining the REST API an agent calls to create and complete a checkout session, and a Delegated Payment Spec for passing a scoped payment token to the merchant. The merchant's own systems stay in control of pricing, tax, fulfillment, and the actual charge throughout.
Who built it, and under what license
ACP was created by Stripe, OpenAI, and Meta and launched on September 29, 2025, alongside Instant Checkout in ChatGPT. Per the official specification at agenticcommerce.dev, ACP is open source and community-designed under the Apache 2.0 license, meaning any business, AI platform, or payment processor can implement it without licensing it from any of the three companies that built it.
Even though three large companies built ACP, none of them takes over the actual sale. The business selling the product stays the merchant of record for the whole transaction: it decides what gets listed, how it's presented, and how the order is fulfilled. The agent handles the conversation with the buyer; whether to accept an order still sits with the merchant's own systems, not with Stripe, OpenAI, or Meta.
The three specs that make up ACP
ACP is not one API. It is three separate, composable specifications, and a business can be evaluated against each independently:
Covers how a merchant hands over its catalog, prices, stock levels, and images, so an agent shows real products instead of stale or wrong ones. Feeds need to stay current as inventory and pricing actually change.
A versioned REST API a merchant implements to let an agent create, update, retrieve, complete, and cancel a checkout session. All endpoints run over HTTPS and return JSON; the agent renders the cart, but the merchant's response is always the authoritative state.
Defines how an agent obtains a payment token, scoped to a specific purchase, instead of ever handling the buyer's actual card details. Stripe's Shared Payment Token was the first Delegated Payment Spec-compatible implementation, per Stripe's own documentation, with the spec designed so other payment processors can build compatible tokens too.
A merchant does not need to implement all three from scratch alone. Payment processors including Stripe, PayPal, and Adyen have built ACP support into their existing infrastructure; see our guides to how Stripe, PayPal, and Adyen each frame that support for merchants already using them.
How a purchase actually flows
Per OpenAI's own developer documentation, three roles do distinct, well-defined jobs in an ACP transaction:
Interprets what the buyer wants, renders the checkout experience inside its own interface, and calls the merchant's Agentic Checkout endpoints to create and update the session on the buyer's behalf.
Performs validation, determines fulfillment options, calculates and charges sales tax, runs its own payment and fraud checks, and charges the payment method through its existing processor. The merchant then accepts or declines the order and returns that state to the agent.
Tokenizes the buyer's payment credentials into a delegated token, scoped to that specific purchase, so the agent can pass it to the merchant without ever seeing or storing the underlying card details.
Worth being precise about one thing here: the buyer sees and interacts with the checkout entirely inside the agent's own interface, but none of the actual transaction logic runs there. Validating the order, calculating tax, screening for fraud, and charging the card all happen back on the merchant's own infrastructure. The agent is a front end for the conversation, not a payment processor.
ChatGPT's Instant Checkout, the first product experience built on ACP, was retired by OpenAI on March 4, 2026, about five months after launch, citing low adoption. ACP itself did not go away, its role shifted from powering in-chat checkout to primarily product discovery and feed data, with the purchase itself now completed back on the merchant's own site. See our Stripe and Agentic Commerce guide for the full detail on that change.
ACP vs UCP
ACP is not the only open standard in this space. The Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP), led by Google with Shopify, Etsy, Wayfair, Target, and Walmart, launched later, in January 2026, and covers a broader span of the shopping journey.
| ACP | UCP | |
|---|---|---|
| Announced | September 29, 2025 | January 11, 2026 |
| Led by | Stripe, OpenAI, and Meta | Google, with Shopify, Etsy, Wayfair, Target, and Walmart |
| Structure | Three specs: Product Feed, Agentic Checkout, Delegated Payment | A single JSON manifest at /.well-known/ucp |
| Primary surface | ChatGPT product discovery, and other ACP adopters | Google AI Mode and other UCP-compatible agents |
Both are open, Apache-style standards, so a merchant is not limited to picking one. See our Universal Commerce Protocol guide for the same level of detail on UCP's manifest structure, or our Agent Payments Protocol (AP2) guide for how a third, payment-authorization-focused standard fits alongside both.
Who has actually adopted it
Per Stripe's own recap of NRF 2026, more than 25 partners across the ecosystem, including Salesforce and Squarespace, have endorsed ACP, alongside brands onboarded to Stripe's Agentic Commerce Suite such as URBN (Anthropologie, Free People, Urban Outfitters), Etsy, Coach, Kate Spade, and Ashley Furniture. Adoption is still concentrated among early movers rather than the norm across e-commerce, so whether a given platform or processor actually supports ACP today is worth checking directly rather than assuming.
Checking for UCP specifically?
ACP and UCP are separate standards with separate discovery mechanisms. If your goal is UCP compliance, check whether a manifest is present and correctly structured.
Frequently asked questions
The Product Feed Spec, for sharing structured catalog data; the Agentic Checkout Spec, the REST API an agent uses to create, update, and complete a checkout session; and the Delegated Payment Spec, which defines how an agent obtains a scoped payment token instead of handling card details directly.
No. Per OpenAI's own documentation, the checkout session is rendered inside the agent's interface, but the actual checkout state and payment processing happen on the merchant's own systems, through the merchant's existing payment processor.
Yes. ACP is released under the Apache 2.0 license and is open for any business, AI platform, or payment processor to implement without licensing it from Stripe, OpenAI, or Meta.
ACP launched September 29, 2025, built by Stripe, OpenAI, and Meta, and structures a purchase as three specs: a product feed, a checkout API, and a delegated payment token. UCP launched later, in January 2026, led by Google with Shopify and other retailers, and uses a single JSON manifest published at /.well-known/ucp. They are separate, independently governed standards, and a merchant can implement either or both.
No, OpenAI retired it on March 4, 2026, citing low adoption. ACP itself continues; its role shifted to primarily product discovery and feed data, with the purchase completed on the merchant's own site rather than inside ChatGPT.
Sources
- agenticcommerce.dev, the official ACP specification
- Stripe Documentation, "Agentic Commerce Protocol"
- OpenAI Developers, "Key concepts – Agentic Commerce"
- Stripe, "Developing an open standard for agentic commerce"
- Stripe, "The three biggest agentic commerce trends from NRF 2026"
- Digital Commerce 360, "OpenAI shifts checkout plans in its agentic commerce strategy"