With agentic commerce expected to capture up to 20% of market share in the US alone by 2030, brands should be looking to ensure their incentives strategies are fully visible and intelligible to shopping agents.
To help retailers achieve this, Talon.One has launched its Unified Incentives Protocol (UIP), a set of platform-agnostic standards designed to bring promotions and loyalty incentives to the fore across AI agent-based shopping experiences.
The Protocol is designed to drive product and brand discoverability where AI agents search and compare; find new forms of engagement by treating agents as a core omnichannel touchpoint; and avoid over-enthusiastic price competition.
“Imagine Gemini recommending Brand A over Brand B, not just on price or preference, but because the purchase would earn the shopper 200 loyalty points and unlock Gold tier status. Incentives become an integral part of the agent’s decision-making logic, not an afterthought – and brands avoid resorting to a race to the bottom,” explains Christoph Gerber, CEO of Talon.One.
Talon.One has also launched the first two building blocks of UIP: loyalty and discount extensions for Google’s Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP), spanning all of Talon.One’s loyalty and select discount features. The UCP extensions ensure that customers shopping via Gemini or other AI agents that adopt UCP can see and benefit from the complete loyalty experience a brand offers.
The extensions provide UCP-enabled agents with:
- Visibility into a customer’s point balance and tier status
- Clear understanding of points earned or redeemed within a transaction
- Support for card-based loyalty programs, enabling loyalty use cases without identity linking
