OpenAI launched a feature called Instant Checkout, which allows users to make purchases directly within ChatGPT without linking out to external sites.
Here's what we know about the launch:
- The feature is powered by the Agentic Commerce Protocol, which OpenAI developed with Stripe and major e-commerce platforms to let AI agents handle shopping and checkout directly inside conversations through standardized merchant integrations.
- Etsy is the first platform to integrate with Instant Checkout.
- Shopify is next and other platforms are on the way.
- OpenAI is accepting applications from merchants outside of Etsy or Shopify who want to have their products available for purchase through ChatGPT.
- Initially it supports single-item purchases, but in the future it will expand to multi-item carts. (From different merchants? TBD)
- OpenAI will take a fee from transactions that are completed through ChatGPT, but no-one knows how much yet, and the fee could be different for each partner. Users will not be charged anything beyond their existing ChatGPT subscription (if they have one).
- Etsy says there is no fee for sellers “at this time,” per a post on the Etsy forum.
- OpenAI is open-sourcing Agentic Commerce Protocol so that merchants, developers, and even other AI platforms can begin building their integrations.
- Amazon and Walmart aren’t currently using the protocol, which is positioned as a direct competitor to Google's Agent Payments Protocol (AP2). Actually, can we just take a pause right here, Google and OpenAI, and combine the two protocols before this becomes a VHS / Betamax scenario?
Here's how Instant Checkout works:
- Users ask a shopping question like “What are the best Big Bird pajamas for women?”
- ChatGPT shows the most relevant products from across the web in a product carousel.
- OpenAI says that product results are organic and unsponsored, ranked purely on relevance to the user (for now).
- If a product supports Instant Checkout, users can tap “Buy,” confirm their order, shipping, and payment details, and complete the purchase without ever leaving the chat.
- ChatGPT users can pay with their card on file or other cards and express payment methods.
- Orders, payments, and fulfillment are handled by the merchant using their existing systems, such as Etsy or Shopify.
- ChatGPT simply acts as the user's AI agent, securely passing information between the user and merchant.
The big opportunity here is that it's new.
Right now ChatGPT is a zero-cost discovery channel, and merchants are in desperate need of channels that don't charge them an arm and a leg to put their products in front of shoppers. Marketing and acquisition costs can easily exceed 50% on other platforms, but for now, it doesn't cost a penny to reach OpenAI's 700M users. Emphasis on the “for now.”
Might as well hop on the train early because the more merchants that begin selling their wares on ChatGPt, the more expensive it'll become to surface your products. At least that's how it's historically worked with discovery channels and marketplaces that have introduced advertising.
The downside of Instant Checkout is that the brand you worked so hard to cultivate through your website, photos, and videos, gets minimized to a text field that simply displays your brand name in the same font as every other company name to surface through ChatGPT. And forget about your upsell and cross-sell funnels!
Then there's Amazon, who are basically like “we're going to walk this path alone” when it comes to AI product discovery and agentic commerce. At least for now, while they figure out how to protect their $60B advertising empire along the way.