Google Launches AI Shopping Checkout in Australia With Bunnings, THE ICONIC and More

Google has launched its Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP), an agentic-shopping framework, in Australia — signing up several major local retailers as launch partners.

According to coverage in Inside Retail Australia and corroborating reports, Australia has become the first market in the Asia-Pacific region to roll out the protocol, an open standard co-developed by Google and retail industry partners to support the emerging era of agentic commerce.

As part of the launch, a new checkout experience is rolling out in Australia with participation from major retailers including Adore Beauty, Bunnings, Kogan Group, Petbarn and THE ICONIC.

The feature is designed to let shoppers buy without leaving Google's own surfaces. The initiative allows Australian shoppers to make single-item purchases directly within Google Search, including AI Mode, and the Gemini app, reducing the number of steps between discovering a product and buying it.

Google said the cart will automatically monitor pricing changes and stock availability after products are added, notifying users when items become available or when prices change.

Coverage indicates the surfaces will expand over time, with YouTube and Gmail set to follow the initial Search, AI Mode and Gemini rollout.

Google pointed to its own data to explain the timing. The company said 73 per cent of Australians report making faster and more confident decisions when using AI Overviews and AI Mode.

It also noted that AI Mode queries have doubled each quarter since launch, while AI Overviews now attracts more than 2.5 billion monthly active users globally and AI Mode has surpassed one billion monthly users.

It's worth noting these figures originate from Google itself rather than independent measurement, so they are best read as the company's own reported metrics.

Google framed the launch as a way to simplify connection for retailers across the board.

"Launching locally with leaders such as Bunnings, Kogan Group, THE ICONIC, Adore Beauty and Petbarn, UCP lets any retailer connect once and work everywhere, seamlessly," said Adrian Vallelonga, Head of Performance Solutions at Google Australia and New Zealand.

Kogan's chief marketing officer, Karl Winther, described the partnership as "the next step" in the company's journey, according to Inside Retail.

One nuance for context: the complete Universal Cart experience launches first in the United States, with Australia receiving the UCP checkout integration now and broader capabilities expected to follow. The full US feature set is not necessarily live locally today.

Whether or not your business sits in retail, this launch signals a broader shift: customers are increasingly discovering, comparing and buying through AI-driven surfaces rather than traditional websites alone. For any Australian mid-market business, that raises a practical question — is your product, pricing and stock data clean, consistent and ready to plug into these new channels?

Features like real-time price and availability monitoring only work when the underlying data is accurate and unified. When information lives in scattered systems — your CRM, accounting platform, inventory tools and more — keeping it reliable across every channel becomes a constant struggle.

That's the foundation Intellova is built on: bringing your business data together into one unified, AI-ready database. As agentic commerce and AI tools move from novelty to expectation, the businesses best positioned to act are the ones whose data is already in order.