ChatGPT turns shopping agent with new Instant Checkout feature
Last year, Perplexity AI rolled out in-chat shopping and payments, while Microsoft’s Copilot Merchant Program lets sellers build storefronts inside AI-powered chats.
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OpenAI has taken a major step toward reshaping the future of online shopping with the launch of “Instant Checkout” inside ChatGPT, enabling U.S. users to purchase products from Etsy and soon from Shopify merchants without leaving a conversation.
The feature, available to ChatGPT Pro, Plus, and Free logged-in users, allows direct single-item purchases from U.S.-based Etsy sellers. OpenAI says over one million Shopify merchants , including popular brands like Glossier, Skims, Spanx, and Vuori, will be added soon.
The move signals a potential shift in the balance of power in e-commerce, where product discovery and purchasing have long been dominated by Google’s search and Amazon’s marketplace.
With conversational AI, users could increasingly skip traditional platforms and rely on AI agents to recommend, compare, and secure purchases in a few taps.
“Today, Instant Checkout supports single-item purchases. Next, we’ll add multi-item carts and expand merchants and regions,” OpenAI wrote in a blog post. The company also emphasized that product results surfaced in ChatGPT are “organic and unsponsored, ranked purely on relevance to the user,” with merchants paying only a small fee per completed transaction.
At the core of the new system is the Agentic Commerce Protocol, an open standard co-developed with Stripe and leading retailers. This protocol enables AI agents, people, and businesses to interact seamlessly in the shopping process — from order placement to payment and fulfillment — without requiring merchants to overhaul their existing systems.
OpenAI stressed that the framework is designed with trust and security in mind. Users confirm every step before a transaction is completed, payments are encrypted, and only minimal customer data is shared with merchants.
The launch follows similar moves in the industry. Last year, Perplexity AI rolled out in-chat shopping and payments, while Microsoft’s Copilot Merchant Program lets sellers build storefronts inside AI-powered chats.
For now, OpenAI is betting that a seamless “chat-to-checkout” journey will appeal to both shoppers and sellers. As the company put it: “This marks the next step in agentic commerce, where ChatGPT doesn’t just help you find what to buy, it also helps you buy it.”
