Payments and fintech company Splitit, focused on BNPL and flexible payments, recently announced that it is supporting the Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP) for AI commerce championed by Google and a group of major retailers and technology partners.
The move signals a shift toward standardised, agent‑enabled commerce where artificial intelligence (AI) agents can complete shopping experiences end‑to‑end, starting from choosing products to assembling carts, and selecting payment options such as installment plans.
Splitit had earlier signalled its interest in agent-automated installment processing by introducing the Splitit Agentic Commerce Partner Program on an invite-only basis to bring card-linked installment capabilities to autonomous shopping agents. At the time (late 2025), Splitit’s pioneer solution aligned with emerging industry payment frameworks like Google’s AP2 and OpenAI’s Agentic Commerce Protocol.
“Agentic AI will fundamentally reshape how consumers and businesses buy,” said Ran Landau, CTO of Splitit. “Splitit’s mission is to ensure that seamless, transparent installments are built into this new paradigm from day one, not bolted on later. We look forward to partnering with leading merchants, platforms, networks, and banks in developing meaningful use cases that can be beneficial to shoppers and brands.”
The fresh UCP support announcement has drawn attention because it extends traditional buy‑now‑pay‑later (BNPL) and installment payment options into a new environment: AI‑assisted purchasing based on a shared technical protocol.
Understanding what Splitit and UCP are, how this innovation works, and what safeguards are needed can help consumers and businesses evaluate the future of digital agentic commerce.
Splitit Solutions
Splitit is a fintech company that offers card‑linked installment payments. Instead of issuing new credit or requiring separate credit checks, Splitit lets shoppers split purchases into smaller payments using the available balance on an existing credit card. Splitit’s technology can reduce friction at checkout and enable flexible payment options through merchants’ payment flows.
In supporting Google’s Universal Commerce Protocol, Splitit aims to make its installment option available within agent‑driven shopping experiences. In other words, AI assistants, whether embedded in search engines, voice interfaces, or retail apps, could present Splitit as a payment choice during checkout. This would allow consumers to complete purchases with installments without manual selection of payment methods at each step.
What the Universal Commerce Protocol Is
The Universal Commerce Protocol is a technical standard designed to facilitate commerce in an era where AI plays an active role in online shopping. UCP defines a shared structure for how product information, shopping carts, pricing, payment options, checkout steps, and order confirmations are exchanged between systems.
The goal of UCP is to reduce the need for custom integrations between every merchant, payment provider, and AI assistant. With a standard such as UCP, platforms can build once and operate across many partners, making it easier for AI agents to participate in the checkout flow regardless of underlying systems.
This type of system is often described as agentic commerce — the idea that AI agents can act on behalf of users to complete commerce tasks. A key innovation here is that the checkout process itself becomes part of a shared protocol, rather than being siloed behind individual merchant or payment APIs.
Innovation: AI Agents Handling Installment Payments
What is new about this approach is the idea that AI agents could select and execute credit-bearing payment choices like installments and buy now pay later (BNPL) within a standardised checkout protocol. Traditionally, payment options have been locked behind bespoke integrations with individual merchants. For example, one retailer’s site might support a particular BNPL provider, while another uses a different system. AI agents have lacked a consistent way to choose and present payment options across sites.
With UCP, an AI agent could, in theory:
- Identify products that a user wants,
- Assemble the cart,
- Query the available payment options, including Splitit installment plans,
- Present choices to the user,
- Complete the payment through a standardised API.
This could make installment payments more accessible across a broader range of merchants without requiring each store to build separate connections to every payment provider.
Concerns: Consent, Credit, and Control
The idea of AI agents handling payments raises questions about consent, credit use, and user control. While UCP standardises data formats and flows, the protocol itself does not enforce business rules or credit policies. Those must be implemented by the platforms, wallets, and agents that use the protocol.
For example:
- If an AI agent is authorised to complete purchases on behalf of a user, especially using a credit card rather than pre-loaded funds, there must be safeguards to prevent unintended spending,
- Users need clear approval steps before any transaction is final,
- Spending limits and thresholds should be configurable by the user,
- Notifications and confirmations are necessary to ensure transparency.
These concerns are especially relevant when installment plans are involved because they affect future payments. Finance regulators and consumer protection advocates often emphasise explicit consent and clear disclosure of terms for credit and installment products. UCP provides the technical plumbing, but the responsibility for consent and safeguards lies with the ecosystem participants who implement the protocol.
How Technical Standards Can Help
At the same time, technical standards like the Universal Commerce Protocol can help by making it easier to build consistent consent and control layers across different platforms. Because UCP defines how checkout data is structured, developers can build common consent prompts, rule engines for user‑defined spending limits, standard notifications for completed purchases, and integrations with identity and authentication systems.
In this way, UCP does not automatically ensure safe behaviour, but it creates a foundation on which safe behaviour can be consistently implemented. If every AI agent and wallet provider adheres to the same protocol and consent framework, consumers may benefit from more predictable and transparent commerce experiences.
Other Supporters of the Protocol
In addition to Splitit and Google, the Universal Commerce Protocol has received backing from a range of companies and retailers interested in making agentic commerce more interoperable. Names associated with UCP include major platforms and merchants that see value in a standardised system for product discovery, cart management, and checkout, like Shopify, Target, Walmart, Etsy, Wayfair, Klarna, etc.
As more participants implement UCP and build payment options such as installments into AI‑assisted shopping flows, the broader payments ecosystem could experience lower integration costs and greater consumer choice. However, real‑world adoption will depend on thoughtful implementation of consent mechanisms, credit controls, and user preferences aligned with consumer protection principles.
