PayPal & OpenAI: Shop Directly in ChatGPT
▼ Summary
– PayPal is adopting OpenAI’s Agentic Commerce Protocol to enable shopping directly within ChatGPT starting in 2026.
– Users can pay with their PayPal wallets, which provides buyer/seller protection and dispute resolution services.
– PayPal will handle card payments through a separate API and manage merchant routing without requiring integrations.
– Starting next year, merchants using PayPal products will have their products discoverable on ChatGPT in categories like apparel and electronics.
– PayPal is expanding its AI commerce partnerships and providing enterprise ChatGPT access to all employees for enhanced productivity.
Beginning in 2026, PayPal will enable users to complete purchases directly within ChatGPT, thanks to a new integration with OpenAI’s Instant Checkout feature. This move is powered by the adoption of the Agentic Commerce Protocol (ACP), an open-source specification from OpenAI that allows merchants to list products inside AI applications. Shoppers will be able to buy items using AI agents without ever leaving the ChatGPT interface.
OpenAI’s Instant Checkout, which launched in September, streamlines the entire purchasing process. It lets customers confirm their order details, enter shipping information, and finalize payment all in one place. PayPal’s wallet will be available as a payment method, offering buyer and seller protection along with dispute resolution services. The company will also provide technology to handle card payments through a separate payments API within ChatGPT.
Starting next year, merchants using PayPal’s services will see their products featured on ChatGPT. Initial categories will include apparel, fashion, beauty, home improvement, and electronics. Importantly, merchants won’t need to build any custom integrations, PayPal will manage all backend routing and payment processing for them.
PayPal is also rolling out an agentic commerce suite that helps merchants showcase their catalogs across various AI apps, accept payments in those environments, and gain valuable insights into consumer behavior. This initiative is part of PayPal’s broader strategy to embed itself as a payments partner in AI-driven shopping experiences, especially as more people turn to AI tools for daily tasks.
Earlier this year, PayPal teamed up with Perplexity to enable checkout within that AI search platform, and in September it announced plans to adopt Google’s Agent Payments Protocol for integration across Google’s ecosystem. Beyond commerce, PayPal is giving all its employees enterprise access to ChatGPT and encouraging engineers to make greater use of OpenAI’s Codex coding tools.
Alex Chriss, President and CEO of PayPal, emphasized the natural synergy between the two platforms. “Hundreds of millions of people turn to ChatGPT each week for help with everyday tasks, including finding products they love, and over 400 million use PayPal to shop,” he said. “By partnering with OpenAI and adopting the Agentic Commerce Protocol, PayPal will power payments and commerce experiences that help people go from chat to checkout in just a few taps for our joint customer bases.”
(Source: TechCrunch)
