lululemon, Shoppers Drug Mart, Simons and select Shopify merchants are first in line. Google Canada’s Eric Morris on how other retailers can get ready + what it means for Canadian marketers.
Canadians using AI Mode in Google Search or the Gemini app can now buy from some retailers without leaving the conversation. Google began rolling out direct checkout in Canada on November 4, with lululemon, Shoppers Drug Mart, Simons and select Shopify merchants among the first eligible retailers.
The timing lines up with Google’s own research on how Canadians plan to shop this season. In an October survey of 1,057 Canadians who plan to make a holiday purchase, conducted with Angus Reid, 59% said they plan to use an AI tool to help them shop. According to Google, shoppers are already using these tools at nearly every stage, from finding ideas and comparing prices to getting help with setup after the purchase.
Checkout moves into the conversation
Until now, a shopper could research a product in AI Mode but had to click through to the retailer’s site to buy it. Now with direct checkout, an eligible retailer’s product can be purchased on the spot, using Google Pay and the payment methods and shipping details already saved in the shopper’s Google Wallet.
Google calls this agentic commerce, meaning AI that completes tasks on a shopper’s behalf, with their permission. Underneath it is the Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP), an open standard Google says it launched with industry partners earlier this year. UCP gives AI agents, retailers and payment providers a shared way to talk to each other, so a retailer doesn’t need a custom connection for every surface where a sale might happen.
The retailer stays the seller of record
Even when the purchase happens inside Google, the retailer is still the seller of record. “They manage the transaction, shipping and returns just as they would for a purchase on their own website,” said Eric Morris, Managing Director and Head of Retail at Google Canada. “They continue to own the customer relationship.” Participating retailers can also choose whether to offer their full catalogue through direct checkout or only specific products. Loyalty rewards aren’t part of the experience yet, though Google says it plans to add capabilities like that with retailers in the coming months.
Early partners, different priorities
Loblaw Companies, which owns Shoppers Drug Mart, sees it as a matter of meeting customers where discovery now happens. “Conversational AI is increasingly becoming part of how Canadians explore, get inspired and make decisions,” said Lauren Steinberg, Chief Digital Officer. “Our job is to evolve with our customers, so when they’re ready to move from discovery to purchase, we’re there.”
The other early partners are approaching it more cautiously. lululemon’s Nick Engel, SVP Global Digital Experience, described the launch as a way to “understand how agentic commerce can actually serve our guests.” At Simons, a retailer known for curation, Chief Digital and Marketing Officer Frederick Lecoq said the goal is checkout “without compromising the curation and care our customers trust.”
What retailers outside the first group can do now
Access will widen over time. UCP is already available globally for merchants and developers to build with, and Shopify says merchants selling into Canada can be bought from directly in AI Mode and the Gemini app “with zero extra work.” For everyone else, Google plans to being rolling out a simplified UCP integration in Merchant Center in 2027, so businesses of any size can turn on direct checkout from their own accounts. In the meantime, Morris recommends making sure “your data in Merchant Center, from product feeds to brand assets, is as robust and up to date as possible.”
The misconception Eric Morris hears most
The bigger shift, in his view, is what marketers expect an agent to do. “The biggest misconception is that ‘agentic’ only means making the purchase,” he said. “In reality, an agent can do a lot of the discovery work, and remove admin friction, so shoppers get to focus on the joy of discovery and still make the final decision to buy.”
Where this leaves marketers
For most Canadian marketers, the more immediate change is where the buying decision happens, more than the checkout button itself. When a shopper can research, compare and buy without ever reaching the retailer’s site, the product listing becomes the brand’s main point of contact. That puts new weight on work that often gets handed off: product titles, descriptions, images and pricing in Merchant Center, which Google points to as the first thing to get right.
It also changes what a site visit is worth. For eligible products, part of the journey a holiday campaign was built to drive traffic for may now finish inside AI Mode or Gemini. Google hasn’t yet detailed what reporting retailers will see for direct checkout sales, so it’s worth asking your Google contacts how those sales will show up before building plans around them.
Loyalty is the other open question. Retailers keep the customer relationship, but rewards aren’t supported in direct checkout yet, so brands that rely on points to bring shoppers back will need to think about how those customers get recognized when the purchase happens through Google.
