Agent Commerce · Open Infrastructure
The open infrastructure for agentic commerce.
Agents are becoming the new shopping aisle. This is a field guide to what agentic commerce is, why it must be open, and how to build on it.
A working definition.
Agentic commerce is commerce mediated by AI agents — systems that discover, compare, negotiate, and transact on behalf of humans. Think ChatGPT recommending a Swiss watchmaker, Claude summarizing the best espresso machines under $400, or a travel agent scheduling and paying for a trip without a human clicking through booking forms.
This shift changes three things:
- Discovery — search is replaced by answers
- Intent — agents act with purpose, not just information
- Transaction — the agent closes the loop, not a landing page
For businesses, the question is no longer "Do I rank on Google?" It is "Am I available as a tool the agent can call?"
Who's building the rails?
Three protocol camps are racing to define how agents transact.
| Camp | Led by | License | Architecture | Rev share |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| OpenAI ACP | OpenAI + Stripe | Proprietary | Centralized | OpenAI ~4% |
| Google UCP | Google + Shopify/Walmart | Proprietary | Google-controlled | Google-controlled |
| AdCP (open) | Open consortium (Nexbid co-author) | MIT | Decentralized | Publisher keeps 90% |
Each camp sends signals about who owns the agent economy. OpenAI makes ChatGPT the storefront. Google makes Gemini the commerce layer. The open camp — AdCP, MCP, A2A — says: the protocols should be neutral infrastructure, not the property of any single platform.
We are in the open camp. We co-author AdCP. We build on MCP. We release under MIT.
The case against walled gardens.
Every closed commerce protocol has the same problem: the platform owner sees all transactions, sets all fees, defines all terms.
Open protocols solve this the way the open web solved it for information — by making the transport layer neutral. You can still build proprietary products on top. But the rails are shared.
Our stance: Build applications to compete. Contribute protocols to cooperate.
Why this is bigger than advertising.
In 2010, payments on the internet were painful. PayPal dominated. Accepting cards required merchant banks, processors, compliance consultants, weeks of integration. Stripe arrived with one thesis: a few lines of code should be enough to accept a payment.
Stripe didn't invent cards. It didn't invent compliance. It made the infrastructure accessible — to developers, to small businesses, to anyone who wanted to sell something online.
Agentic commerce is at the same point that payments were in 2010. The protocols exist (MCP, AdCP, A2A). The agents exist (ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity). What's missing is the infrastructure that makes it accessible — especially for publishers, small businesses, and non-US companies.
That's what Nexbid is. That's what AdCP is.
Four paths.
Frequently asked
Authors, not spectators.
agent-commerce.ch is maintained by digital opua GmbH, a Swiss software company based in Zug. We co-author the AdCP protocol, operate Nexbid (the first production agent commerce platform in DACH), and advise businesses on integration into the agent economy.
We ship. We run production systems. We write the specs.
Press & partnerships: hallo@digital-opua.ch