Guide
The Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP)
UCP is an emerging way for stores and AI systems to talk to each other in a common language. Here's the concept, honestly framed, and where Serviloq fits.
The idea behind UCP
The Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP) is an interoperability approach for commerce: a shared way for a store to describe what it is and what it can do, so that AI systems and other software can interact with it in a consistent, predictable manner. Rather than every assistant learning the quirks of every store one at a time, a common protocol lets a merchant declare its capabilities once, in a standard shape, and lets many systems understand it the same way.
What a UCP-style integration involves
Conceptually, an interoperability layer like this covers a few connected pieces:
- A public business profile that describes the merchant and points to its capabilities.
- Capability declarations that state what the store supports.
- Catalog, cart, and checkout interfaces so software can browse products and move toward purchase.
- Order-status sync so systems can follow an order after it’s placed.
- Identity linking, so a shopper and their context can be connected across surfaces.
- Webhooks for event notifications, and OAuth for authorization.
- Request signing and verification, so both sides can trust the messages they exchange.
- Conformance testing, to confirm an implementation behaves as expected.
This is exactly the surface area that Serviloq Gateway is being built to support for merchants who aren’t on a supported hosted platform.
An honest framing
A few clarifications matter here. UCP is an emerging interoperability effort — a direction the industry is exploring, not a ratified standard from a formal standards body. Serviloq is not certified, approved, or endorsed by any organization in connection with it, and we don’t claim to be. And Serviloq Gateway is on the roadmap: it is being built to support this kind of interoperability, and is not available today. We’d rather tell you plainly where things stand than imply capabilities or approvals that don’t exist yet.
Do you need Gateway?
For most merchants starting with Serviloq, the answer is no. If your store is on a supported hosted platform — Shopify at launch — you don’t need Gateway to use Serviloq. You can request scan early access and work with the platform as its modules ship. Gateway matters mainly for merchants on systems that need a standards-based way to expose their catalog and commerce capabilities.