OpenAI's Agentic Commerce Protocol and Anthropic's Model Context Protocol serve different roles in the AI commerce stack. Here's how they compare — and why you likely need both.
The Agentic Commerce Protocol (ACP) was launched by OpenAI and Stripe in September 2025. It enables AI agents to browse products, add items to cart, and complete purchases on behalf of users — all through a standardized API.
The Model Context Protocol (MCP) was open-sourced by Anthropic in late 2024. It provides a universal standard for connecting AI models to external data sources and tools — including product catalogs, inventory systems, and review databases.
ACP and MCP are designed for different layers of the AI commerce stack. Here's how they compare across key capabilities.
| Feature | ACP | MCP |
|---|---|---|
| Created by | OpenAI + Stripe | Anthropic |
| Primary purpose | Commerce transactions | Tool & data access |
| Product discovery | ||
| Cart & checkout | ||
| Payment processing | ||
| Catalog data access | ||
| Inventory queries | ||
| Multi-agent support | Via A2A | Native |
| Open standard | Partial | Yes (open-source) |
| Shopify support | Via Asva | Native MCP endpoint |
ACP and MCP aren't rivals — they're layers in a full-stack AI commerce architecture. Think of MCP as the "read" layer and ACP as the "write" layer.
AI agents use MCP to read your product catalog, check inventory, pull reviews, and understand what you sell.
When a user is ready to buy, ACP handles cart creation, checkout flows, and payment processing via Stripe.
Google's Agent-to-Agent protocol enables multiple AI agents to coordinate on complex shopping tasks.
Asva AI helps brands get discovered, compared, and purchased through AI agents. Be visible where the next generation of shopping happens.
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