End of e-shops? ChatGPT can now shop for you – a single sentence is enough

OpenAI is adding a direct purchase feature to ChatGPT. Starting today, users in the USA can buy products directly within the chat – for now, only from the Etsy platform, but soon over a million merchants from Shopify will be added. The feature is called Instant Checkout and is built on the new Agentic Commerce Protocol, which OpenAI developed in collaboration with the payment company Stripe.

How Instant Checkout works

The principle is straightforward: you ask ChatGPT something like “best running shoes under $100” or “a gift for a ceramics lover.” ChatGPT will display relevant products from the web – the results are non-promotional and organic, sorted by relevance to the query.

If a product supports Instant Checkout, you will see a “Buy” button. After clicking, you confirm the order, shipping and payment details, and complete the purchase – all without leaving the chat. Existing ChatGPT subscribers can pay with a card saved in their account, others can enter a card or use express payment methods.

It is important that orders, payments, and delivery are processed by the seller using their existing systems. ChatGPT merely transmits information between the user and the merchant – it acts as a digital personal shopper.

Agentic Commerce Protocol: an open standard

The foundation of the entire feature is the Agentic Commerce Protocol (ACP) – an open-source standard for AI commerce that enables collaboration between AI agents, people, and businesses to complete purchases. OpenAI developed it in collaboration with Stripe and leading commercial partners.

The protocol is designed to:

• Work across platforms, payment processes, and business types
• Allow for rapid integration without changes to backend systems
• Leave merchants in control of customer relationships – from shipping and returns to support

When someone places an order, ChatGPT sends the necessary data to the merchant’s backend using ACP. The merchant accepts or rejects the order, processes the payment through their existing provider, and handles delivery and support just as they do today.

If a merchant already uses Stripe for payments, they can enable agentic payments with “a single line of code.” If they use a different payment processor, they can still participate either by using the Stripe Shared Payment Token API or by adopting the Delegated Payments Spec from ACP – all without needing to change their existing processor.

For whom and for how much

Instant Checkout is available to ChatGPT users in the USA – all plans, including the free one. The service is free for users, does not affect product prices, and does not interfere with search results. Products with Instant Checkout are not preferred in the results.

Merchants pay a small fee for completed purchases, but the exact amount is not disclosed. When ChatGPT ranks several sellers of the same product, it considers factors such as availability, price, quality, whether the merchant is the primary seller, and whether Instant Checkout is enabled – all with the goal of optimizing the user experience.

What comes next

Currently, Instant Checkout supports only single-item purchases. In the future, OpenAI plans to add multi-item carts and expand the offering to over a million merchants from Shopify – including brands like Glossier, SKIMS, Spanx, or Vuori.

The company also wants to expand the feature to other regions, but has not yet specified when and where. Europe or the Czech Republic will likely follow later.

OpenAI has published the protocol documentation and allows those interested in integration to submit applications. The protocol is open-source, so developers and merchants can start building their own integrations today.

Etsy, Shopify, Stripe – who benefits

Collaboration with Etsy makes sense – the platform is known for handmade and unique products, which aligns with the personal nature of ChatGPT conversations. Users often look for gifts or specific items, and Etsy has exactly this type of assortment.

Shopify is a logical choice for scalability – a million merchants will cover a wide range of products from fashion to sports equipment to cosmetics. The question remains how Amazon – the largest e-commerce player in the USA, which is currently missing from the announcement – will approach this.

Stripe gains a position as a key player in AI commerce. Will Gaybrick, President of Technology and Business at Stripe, stated: “Stripe is building the economic infrastructure for AI. This means rebuilding today’s commercial systems and creating new AI experiences for billions of people.”

Is this a beginning, or an experiment?

OpenAI calls the launch “just the beginning.” The reality is that for now, it’s a very limited test – only the USA, only Etsy, only single items. This is not a mass rollout, but cautious testing in a controlled environment.

The question also is whether users actually want to shop in chat. Shopping on a website or in an app has its advantages – filtering, comparing, reading reviews. ChatGPT can recommend a product, but will it replace the entire process?

On the other hand, if you’re looking for a quick solution – “I need a gift under 500 crowns for a friend who likes coffee” – Instant Checkout might be more convenient than browsing five e-shops. It depends on the use case.

Would it be more convenient for you to shop directly within the ChatGPT app?

Source: OpenAI