OpenAI have started what everyone has been expecting, they’ve launch Buy it in ChatGPT and enabled shopping with Instant Checkout and the Agentic Commerce Protocol.
U.S. ChatGPT Plus, Pro, and Free users can now buy directly from U.S. Etsy sellers right in chat, with over a million Shopify merchants, like Glossier, SKIMS, Spanx and Vuori, coming soon. Today, Instant Checkout supports single-item purchases. Next, ChatGPT will add multi-item carts and expand merchants and regions.
The Agentic Commerce Protocol is an open standard for AI commerce that lets AI agents, people, and businesses work together to complete purchases, and was co-developed with Stripe and leading merchant partners to be powerful, secure, and easy to adopt.
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. For shoppers, it’s seamless: go from chat to checkout in just a few taps. For sellers, it’s a new way to reach hundreds of millions of people while keeping full control of their payments, systems, and customer relationships.
– OpenAI
When someone asks a shopping question, ChatGPT shows the most relevant products from across the web. Product results are organic and unsponsored, ranked purely on relevance to the user. If a product supports Instant Checkout, users can tap “Buy,” confirm their order, shipping, and payment details, and complete the purchase without ever leaving the chat. Existing ChatGPT subscribers can pay with their card on file, or other card and express payment options.
Orders, payments, and fulfillment are handled by the merchant using their existing systems. ChatGPT simply acts as the user’s AI agent—securely passing information between user and merchant, just like a digital personal shopper would.
Merchants pay (what OpenAI describe as) ‘a small Buy it in ChatGPT fee’ on completed purchases, but the service is free for users, doesn’t affect their prices, and doesn’t influence ChatGPT’s product results. Instant Checkout items are not preferred in product results. When ranking multiple merchants that sell the same product, ChatGPT considers factors like availability, price, quality, whether a merchant is the primary seller, and whether Instant Checkout is enabled, to optimize the user experience.
