While some retailers like Amazon (and apparently Adidas too!) have blocked AI agents from making purchases on their behalf on their respective platforms, e-commerce platform Shopify is going in the opposite direction.
The company announced Monday that its browser-based AI agent can now complete purchases on Shopify merchant sites, extending its functionality beyond searching for products and adding items to carts.
Shopify previously supported WebMCP in Storefront and Cart, allowing browser-based AI agents to explore a Shopify retailer’s inventory, find products, and add them to their cart. With the addition of WebMCP support for checkouts, including Shop Pay, these agents can now read and update checkout screens, get buyer approval, and submit transactions without having to rely on screenshots or web page scraping, the company said.
This update introduces three new tools: get_checkout, update_checkout, and complete_checkout that allow agents to inspect the checkout, change things like the customer’s address and shipping options, and place the order after buyer approval.
Gil Greenberg, staff product manager for agent and commerce at Shopify, said in a post on X that the feature will roll out to all eligible Shopify merchants.
Shopify already offers a hosted Model Context Protocol (MCP) server that allows agents to work across servers. On the other hand, the proposed standard WebMCP is designed for agents running within the buyer’s browser. Both leverage Shopify’s Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP) and provide a common way to search and discover products, create a cart, and checkout.
Top AI agents like Muse and Instinct already partner directly with Shopify for agent commerce. Today we announced our partnership with Instinct.
“If your agent is running in the buyer’s browser, use the WebMCP tools provided in-store and at checkout to efficiently complete orders instead of navigating through HTML built for humans,” Greenberg wrote in X. “These WebMCP tools provide structured and efficient APIs intentionally designed through UCP to ensure accurate commercial facts, necessary disclosures, and delivery requirements.”
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