LAS VEGAS - eTradeWire -- ShopSnap today announced that stores built on its e-commerce platform now support two open standards for AI shopping. The Model Context Protocol (MCP) lets AI assistants browse a store's catalog. The Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP) lets AI agents put an order together for a shopper. The shopper still reviews and pays on the store's own checkout, and the merchant can see which orders came through an AI agent. Both work out of the box, with nothing for merchants to set up.

MCP, open-sourced by Anthropic in November 2024, is a standard way for AI assistants to connect to outside data and tools. Each ShopSnap store gets its own free, read-only MCP server that needs no account or key. Once a shopper adds it to an assistant such as Claude or ChatGPT, the assistant can browse the store's products and prices, read pages such as shipping and returns, and read its blog. Every answer links back to the right page on the store's website, so shoppers buy from the merchant directly.

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UCP, an open-source standard announced by Google in January 2026 and developed with Shopify, Etsy, Wayfair, Target and Walmart, is endorsed by more than 20 companies, including Visa, Mastercard and Stripe. ShopSnap stores support its current version (2026-08-25), including checkout and shipping.

An AI agent can build an order with the options and quantities the shopper wants, then add the shopper's address to get the store's real shipping options, tax and total. It hands the shopper a secure link that fills the cart and checkout form on the store's website, where the shopper reviews the order and pays, so the agent never sees or handles payment details. A returning customer signs in with their own password first, so the order lands in their account.

Every order now records whether a person or an AI agent placed it, and which agent platform, so merchants can see their AI-driven sales in the store admin.

"AI assistants are becoming a new front door for shopping, and we want every ShopSnap store to be open for business there," said Gal Ratner of ShopSnap. "Assistants can now find our merchants' products and put an order together, while the merchant keeps the customer, the checkout and the payment. Because both protocols are open standards, our stores work with any assistant that speaks them."

MCP and UCP support is live now and rolling out to all ShopSnap stores. Anyone can try both on ShopSnap's sample store, Rad Home:

AI connector (MCP) setup: https://www.radho.me/mcp

AI agent checkout (UCP) guide: https://www.radho.me/ucp