Digital Economy

ChatGPT becomes a 'shopping agent': now you can shop on Etsy and Shopify without leaving the chatroom

The service, called Instant Checkout, currently only supports single item purchases and is currently only available in the US.

30 September 2025

3' min read

Search and even buy products online, all via Chatgpt. Full service in the chatbot with artificial intelligence. OpenAi, the Chatgpt company, announced yesterday that all Chatgpt users (including free users) will be able to buy products from domestic sellers on the online marketplace Etsy and from some merchants on the e-commerce platform Shopify. The service, called Instant Checkout, currently only supports purchases of individual items and for now is only available in the US. The move completes OpenAI's push into e-commerce, as a few months ago it had launched intoprice comparison services .

OpenAI also presented an open source technical standard for merchants wishing to integrate with ChatGpt, called Agentic Commerce Protocol. OpenAI thus hopes to attract more merchants to its chatbot platform. The protocol allows merchants to make their products purchasable within ChatGpt.

How it works

When we type in something about a possible purchase, e.g. 'the best mobile phone under 200 euros suitable for a teenager', Chatgpt shows the most relevant products available on the web. "Product-related results are organic and non-sponsored, ranked solely according to their relevance to the user," the company explains in a note.

Then the next step: if a product supports instant payment, users can tap 'Buy', confirm the order, with shipping and payment details, and complete the purchase without ever leaving the chatroom. ChatGpt subscribers can pay with their registered card or with other cards and quick payment options.

Orders, payments and order fulfilment are handled by the merchant using its own systems. "Chatgpt simply acts as the user's AI agent, securely transmitting information between the user and the merchant, just as a digital personal shopper would," the company explains.

Merchants pay a small commission on completed purchases, but the service is free for users, does not affect their prices, and does not influence ChatGpt's product results. Instant Checkout items are not preferred in the product results (a move that differentiates the chatbot from Amazon, which sorts results according to favourable criteria such as support for prime). When ranking multiple merchants selling the same product, Chatgpt considers factors such as availability, price, quality; whether a merchant is the primary seller and whether Instant Checkout is enabled.

With this move, OpenAI seeks to expand its business, which is now running at a heavy loss. In the first half of 2025 it burned 2.5 billion (out of 4.3 billion in revenues), as stated a few hours ago.

Ecommerce can help the bottom line a little, but above all it can make the product more complete. More than one in ten people who use ChatGpt have an intention or interest in making a purchase, said Michelle Fradin, OpenAI's product manager for commerce.

OpenAI's AI agent Operator, released earlier this year, can also purchase goods on behalf of users, but requires them to manually enter payment information at checkout. Chagpt's Instant Checkout function is designed to be easier to use within the chatbot, and more users use ChatGPT to search for products than Operator, Fradin said.

OpenAI's latest move also serves to lay the groundwork for future AI agent-based shopping, which is still in its infancy. Amazon and eBay have their own AI shopping agents, but these are still very imperfect.

They need authorisation to access apps, APIs and websites if they want to call an Uber or book a flight. The Model Context Protocol, an open source standard introduced by Anthropic last year, can help this evolution. Now OpenAI's Agentic Commerce Protocol also comes into play to broaden the base of companies involved.

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