Google started rolling out a UCP integration hub in Merchant Center that lets US merchants add a checkout button to their product listings in AI Mode and Gemini, so shoppers can complete their purchase without leaving Google. Until now, checkout inside Google’s AI surfaces was limited to a short list of big retailers like Etsy, Wayfair, and Walmart, as well as Shopify stores that Google enrolled automatically. The new hub opens up a more standardized path for other merchants to apply, build their integrations, and manage checkout capabilities through Merchant Center.
Here’s how it works:
- Merchants choose which capabilities to support, including Cart Transfer (sends the shopper’s cart to the merchant’s own site to finish checkout), Native Checkout (the shopper pays on Google without leaving the AI interface), and Identity Linking (connects the shopper’s account on the merchant’s site to their Google account).
- Shoppers pay with Google Pay, using the cards and shipping addresses saved in Google Wallet. Only standard stored cards work for now, but Google has already announced plans to add PayPal, and I’d imagine BNPL and other payment options will follow.
- The merchant remains the seller of record and handles the order through their website backend, even when the checkout itself happens on Google.
- Merchants choose which products get a Buy button by flagging them in their product feed. Google excludes categories like subscriptions, pre-orders, used goods, and age-restricted items.
- Merchants need a Google Pay & Wallet Console account, and their payment processor has to support Google Pay.
- Google hasn’t disclosed any fees.
For now, the integration isn’t fully open and accessible to everyone, as merchants have to build the integration themselves, fill out an interest form, and wait to be picked before they can even test it in a sandbox. However, I’d imagine that the option will be available to all Shopify merchants soon enough, given Shopify’s involvement with developing UCP. Google already started automatically enrolling eligible US Shopify stores in native checkout on September 23.
As for countries where it’s supported… Google’s general help page lists the US, Canada, and Australia as eligible for UCP-powered checkout, but its newer integration hub documentation says Canada and Australia won’t get access until next year. Meanwhile, Google was already testing checkout with Flipkart in India a few weeks ago. So who really knows!
This is the closest Google has ever been to building a full-funnel e-commerce marketplace.
If you recall, Google spent the better part of a decade trying to get shoppers to check out on Google with features like Google Express and Buy on Google, before shutting it all down in 2023 and declaring it “a small feature that a very limited number of merchants used.” Google may have been ahead of its time, but now the world is ready and eager to never set foot on a merchant’s website. Right?
