The Agentic Commerce Ecosystem: A Map from Protocols to Practice

Laatst bijgewerkt: October 16, 2025

The Landscape Has Changed

A week ago, the world of agentic commerce looked like a two-horse race between Google and OpenAI. Today, that picture is obsolete. Recent announcements from companies like Cloudflare, Visa, and commercetools have completely redrawn the map. It’s no longer a simple duel; it’s a complex, multi-layered ecosystem that is maturing at an incredible pace.

It’s time for a new map. Let’s break down the different layers of this ecosystem to understand who is doing what, and why it matters to you as a business owner.

Layer 1: The Foundation - Protocols for Trust & Payments

Before an AI agent can make a purchase, a foundation of trust and security must be in place. This layer ensures that transactions are reliable and fraud-resistant.

• Trusted Agent Protocol (TAP): Announced by Cloudflare, Visa, and Mastercard. This protocol acts as a digital passport, allowing an AI agent to prove its identity and legitimacy. It’s the base layer that separates malicious bots from trustworthy shopping assistants.
• Agent Payments Protocol (AP2): Google’s standard, developed in collaboration with payment providers like Adyen. AP2 focuses specifically on streamlining the payment process, enabling an agent to securely and efficiently check out on behalf of a user.

These protocols are the invisible but essential infrastructure. They are the highways and payment rails of the new AI economy.

Layer 2: The Shopping Experience - Commerce Protocols

On top of the trust layer sits the ‘shopping’ layer. These protocols define the actual customer experience: how an agent discovers products, requests information, fills a shopping cart, and places an order.

• Agentic Commerce Protocol (ACP) by OpenAI: The original standard from the creators of ChatGPT, aimed at seamless integration within their ecosystem.
• Agentic Commerce Protocol (ACP) by commercetools: An independent yet equally powerful standard from one of the largest e-commerce platforms. This protocol is specifically designed for large, complex retail environments.

This layer determines the ‘language’ that a webshop and an AI agent speak to complete a successful transaction from start to finish.

Layer 3: The Real World - Retail Implementations

Technology is only relevant when it’s put into practice. This layer is the proof that agentic commerce has moved beyond theory.

• Frasers Group (Sports Direct, FLANNELS): The first major European retailer to implement agentic commerce at scale, in partnership with commercetools. They are the first to open their stores along the new highways. This is the concrete evidence that adoption has begun.

Conclusion: Don’t Pick a Winner, Be Ready for Everyone

The most important takeaway from this new map is that you don’t have to bet on a single horse. The future is a layered system where different protocols will coexist and potentially even interoperate.

The winning strategy is not to choose Google, OpenAI, or Visa. The winning strategy is to ensure your own systems are flexible and API-driven. You need to be ready to ‘talk’ to any agent that comes knocking, regardless of the protocol they use.

The foundation is being laid, the stores are being built. The only question that remains is: are you ready to open the door?