Google Merchant Center auto-enables native checkout on AI Mode and Gemini

Google has begun emailing Merchant Center sellers whose store platform supports the Universal Commerce Protocol that their products are “automatically included” in native checkout, letting shoppers buy directly inside Google AI Mode, Gemini and Search, per Search Engine Roundtable. Checkout itself has run on UCP since February; what changed is that eligible sellers are now opted in by default rather than choosing to turn it on, and Shopify merchants who want purchases to stay on their own site must disable it under Sales channels > Agentic. Google’s notice does not say whether it takes a fee on native-checkout sales.