🚨EXCLUSIVE DOUBLE FLASH!!🚨 Google Universal Cart is Live *PLUS* Target is live on Google Checkout! (Both Powered by UCP)
Big day in Agentic Commerce! I was recording a demo of Target's UCP Cart launch , one of my accounts has the Universal Cart live and you get to see it first on Retailgentic: OUR 1ST DOUBLE FLASH!! 🚨
I’m going to go through this fast, buckle up, this is our first every Retailgentic DOUBLE FLASH - two, yes two breaking Agentic Commerce news updates in one:
Target is live with the Google Gemini UCP-powered cart
(while exploring 1, we discovered this am..) Google has turned on Universal Cart in the wild.
Note: All the new Google/Gemini goodies start in AI Mode - so assume I’m talking about that always. (AI Mode: go to google.com - click on AI mode - right side of search bar, make sure your Google now says “AI Mode” in the upper left.)
Quick history here:
Jan 11 - Google announces UCP at NRF
Feb 11 - UCP went live
March 19th - Google announces multi-item cart and Loyalty
April 22nd - Microsoft DUMPS ACP, Launches USP with Target and first Loyalty integration.
June 19th - The first Retailgentic Double Flash🚨, we have both Target now launching on Gemini PLUS the first Universal Cart live sighting with live demo!
Live Demo
The best way to see this is via this ~10m video. I was doing the Target Cart demo and had tried it on another account to get a feel for it. That account did not have Universal Cart, so mid-demo here it turned into a double demo. A walkthrough follows.
The Trigger: blog post update from Target
What got me here is several Target watchers saw that on socials they mentioned that they had updated this blog post and when you look at the update, it’s saying they are live on Google checkout.
I tried last night and couldn’t get it to pop so checked first thing this am (rollouts take overnight sometime to propogate to all servers/accnts.
Here’s what I discovered this am→
Detailed Walk Through of Target and Etsy in Google’s Universal Cart
Step 1: Research→Find
I skipped research and went right to a sku I knew would be at Target and trigger a product card, but it also showed the new add to cart! (We’ve seen visuals of this from Google I/O and GML).
Step 2: Add to Cart 🎉
When I added the falcon to the cart I got this→
And in the upper right of my google account is now a persistent cart icon! Feels very, umm, Amazony! 🤔
Here’s the little cart that could forever change Agentic Commerce and retail→
Step 3: Load that CART UP!
Since I was full on ‘hallucinating’ (because a universal cart isn’t possible according to the naysayers), I figured heck may as well make it a good one and I loaded the cart with an Etsy item and a Target bag:
Step 4: The Holy Grail 🏆: True Universal Cart Nirvana!
You can see in the above screenshot I have two options: “Buy Now” or “Checkout on Target”
If I hit Buy Now → 2, yes 2 TARGET items in one checkout, the holy grail has been achieved!
OR, If I hit Checkout on Target, it does cart injection and takes me there→
What’s Next?
We’re going to spend the weekend decomposing this and learning more, stay tuned. As I was writing this, Walmart seems to have flipped to ‘on’ as well→
Live on the exponential growth curve, buckle up everyone this holiday is going to be BONKERS!