OpenAI takes on Google, Amazon with new agentic shopping system

ChatGPT users in the U.S. can now make Etsy and Shopify purchases within conversations, marking a next step towards the future of online shopping – both for consumers and the platforms that control product discovery, recommendation, and payments. In other words, OpenAI might be on the path to reshaping who holds power in e-commerce. 

OpenAI’s new “Instant Checkout” feature is available to ChatGPT Pro, Plus, and Free logged-in users buying from U.S.-based Etsy sellers, with more than 1 million Shopify merchants like Glossier, Skims, Spanx, and Vuori “coming soon,” per OpenAI.  

Instant Checkout builds on previous shopping features on ChatGPT that surfaced relevant products, images, reviews, prices, and direct links to merchants in response to shopping questions like “what should I get my friend who loves ceramics?” or “best sneakers to wear to the office.” Now, instead of having to leave the conversation, users can just tap “Buy” to confirm their order, shipping, and payment details (options include Apple Pay, Google Pay, Stripe, or credit card) to complete the purchase.  

Last year, Perplexity introduced a similar in-chat shopping and payments feature. Microsoft also offers merchants the ability to create in-chat storefront capabilities with the Copilot Merchant Program. 

This type of frictionless experience has the potential to spark a new movement in how people shop online – one that moves away from search engines like Google and e-commerce platforms like Amazon towards conversational agents with curated recommendations, comparisons, and easy checkout experiences. 

It’s also setting the stage for new power brokers to emerge in e-commerce. Google and Amazon have long been the gatekeepers for retail discovery. If more purchases start inside AI chatbots, the firms behind them will suddenly have more control over what products are surfaced and what commissions or fees they charge.  

Both Amazon and Google have previously leveraged their dominance to favor their own products or preferred partners, pushing down competitors in search results or charging steep fees to sellers simply to maintain visibility. OpenAI said in a blog post that the product results it surfaces are “organic and unsponsored, ranked purely on relevance to the user,” and that it will charge merchants a “small fee” for completed purchases.  

Along with OpenAI’s introduction of in-chat checkout, the AI firm also noted that it will open-source its Agentic Commerce Protocol (ACP), the tech that powers Instant Checkout built with Stripe, so that other merchants and developers can integrate agentic checkout. 

“Stripe is building the economic infrastructure for AI,” Will Gaybrick, president of technology and business at Stripe, said in a statement. “That means re-architecting today’s commerce systems and creating new AI-powered experiences for billions of people.” 

While some may balk at handing ChatGPT private payment information, the company says orders, payments, and fulfillment are handled by the merchant using their existing systems. ChatGPT merely acts as an agent, an intermediary that can securely pass along information between user and merchant.  

Open-sourcing ACP makes it easier for merchants to integrate with ChatGPT, widening the adoption of AI chatbots that function as a virtual storefront. It also expands OpenAI’s potential control as a gatekeeper for retail discovery and checkout, and could position the firm to be the de facto architect of the AI commerce ecosystem.  

That would put it in tension with Google yet again, as the tech giant has recently launched its own open protocol for purchases initiated by AI agents, dubbed Agent Payments Protocol (AP2).