EN
// glossary

Merchant of record

By Patrice Calvez Updated: August 2026 Read time : 2 min

The entity legally responsible for the sale: collecting payment, invoicing, taxes and the customer relationship. In current agentic protocols, this role stays with the merchant, not the AI platform.

DEFINITION

Merchant of record — The entity legally responsible for the sale: collecting payment, invoicing, taxes and the customer relationship. In current agentic protocols, this role stays with the merchant, not the AI platform.

In practice

The question “who is legally selling?” is decisive: the conversation may happen on an AI surface, but UCP and ACP both explicitly keep the sale with the merchant. AI surfaces are channels, not commercial intermediaries.

See also

NEXT TERM Capability negotiation
→