OpenAI has taken another decisive step toward “agentic commerce” — the emerging era where artificial intelligence acts not only as an assistant, but as a buyer on behalf of consumers.
The company’s new “Buy It in ChatGPT” feature, powered by Stripe’s Agentic Commerce Protocol, marks a fundamental shift in how online shopping, payments and discovery intersect.
At launch, US users can browse and purchase Etsy products directly within ChatGPT, with Shopify’s one million-plus merchants expected to follow.
Instead of clicking through to external websites, shoppers can now complete their purchase entirely inside the chat — from selecting an item to confirming payment and shipping details.
It’s a development that transforms ChatGPT from a search tool into a transactional platform, collapsing discovery, checkout and payment into one seamless interaction.
A New Phase for E-commerce
This integration signals a structural evolution in e-commerce economics.
Traditional search-based discovery — dominated by Google and Amazon — may give way to AI-driven curation, where agents rank and recommend products.
Visibility in this new ecosystem depends not on keywords and ads, but on AI optimisation: structuring product data to align with how intelligent agents interpret user intent.
Merchants who fail to align with these systems risk commercial invisibility.
“If your product doesn’t appear in an agent’s results,” says Karen Webster of PYMNTS, “it effectively doesn’t exist.”
That reality has arrived sooner than many expected.
Payments Meet Personalisation
The technical backbone of Instant Checkout rests on tokenised payments and encrypted authorisations.
Stripe’s system ensures that cards are never exposed, with transactions approved only for verified merchants and specific amounts.
Visa’s Shared Payment Token and Mastercard’s Agent Pay are also being integrated, providing global trust infrastructure for AI-initiated transactions.
Early tests suggest the experience is frictionless.
Researchers completed a $2 poster purchase directly within ChatGPT — the card details were prefilled, the address auto-completed, and payment processed instantly.
But while low-value items demonstrate the system’s ease, high-ticket purchases will test user trust, fraud protection and regulatory oversight.
From “Zero Checkout” to New Gatekeepers
OpenAI’s move hints at the next stage of digital commerce: “Zero Checkout”, where authenticated AI agents complete transactions automatically, often without explicit user action.
In this world, agents become curators and gatekeepers of consumer attention — capable of reshaping retail, travel and financial services.
For now, OpenAI says listings are not sponsored and Etsy products are not preferentially ranked. Yet as commerce becomes conversational, the balance between convenience, transparency and competition will be under growing scrutiny.
The significance of a $2 poster purchase, then, is not the sale itself — it’s the precedent. With discovery, checkout and payment collapsing into a single dialogue, AI agents are poised to redefine the economics of attention, trust and transaction in digital commerce.
The post ChatGPT turns Shopper and Seller launching agentic commerce appeared first on Payments Cards & Mobile.
