OpenAI’s ChatGPT is expanding its functionality to include in-app shopping. The new feature, called Instant Checkout, is powered by the Agentic Commerce Protocol developed by OpenAI and Stripe. ChatGPT Plus, Pro, and Free users in the U.S. can now buy products conversationally, starting with domestic Etsy sellers. Shopify’s merchants will be added soon, with plans to ramp up to “more than a million” of the e-commerce platform’s clients, including Glossier, Spanx and Vuori. The move lays the groundwork for OpenAI’s segue to agentic shopping. Instant Checkout currently supports only single-item purchases, with multi-item carts coming soon, according to OpenAI.

TechCrunch says this marks “a next step toward the future of online shopping — both for consumers and the platforms that control product discovery, recommendation, and payments,” with OpenAI potentially “on the path to reshaping who holds power in e-commerce” as consumers move away from traditional search to a more “frictionless experience.”

ChatGPT already had some shopping functionality, mainly through searches that surfaced recommendations and links. “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,” TechCrunch explains.

The Agentic Commerce Protocol is an open standard for AI commerce that lets AI agents, people, and businesses work together to complete purchases. In a news post, OpenAI says it is also open-sourcing⁠ the technology behind Instant Checkout, so that additional merchants and developers can build integrations.

While OpenAI hopes the easy availability of ChatGPT-compatible shopping tech will draw more merchants into the fold, The Wall Street Journal points out that “Amazon and Walmart, the nation’s two largest digital retailers, aren’t currently using the protocol.”

Amazon and Walmart have onboarded their own shopping assistants and introduced things like visual search, something Google also has, along with Gemini-powered enhancements, like virtual try-on, agentic purchase and price tracking alerts.

“For tech giants like Google and Amazon, there’s a lot at stake as search and e-commerce are radically upended by tools like ChatGPT,” WSJ writes, adding that “people are turning to AI chatbots and services to act as personal shopping assistants.” So it may just wind up whichever AI interface a person feels most comfortable with.

“As of August, OpenAI counted roughly 700 million people — 9 percent of the world’s population — as weekly users of ChatGPT, up from 500 million in March,” notes WSJ. That is still a small number compared to the five billion — roughly 79 percent of the global search market — attributed to Google. Amazon and Walmart have fewer “users” (at about 310 million and 255 million respectively), but they’re all there to shop.