Remember a few weeks ago when OpenAI announced the launch of Instant Checkout and said it was initially partnering with Etsy and Shopify? Then a few weeks later, when Walmart publicly embraced Instant Checkout?
After the announcement, the integration immediately went live with Etsy, but what happened to Shopify? All this anticipation and no climax was starting to give us blue carts!
Well, almost two months later, Instant Checkout has now officially rolled out on select Shopify stores including Glossier, SPANX, and SKIMS, with “more rolling out very very soon” according to Shopify President Harley Finkelstein, who shared a video on X showcasing the feature in action.
The main Shopify account on X also shared a video showcasing:
- A user asking ChatGPT, “I want a new scent for fall that's warm and floral but not too Elon Musky. Any recs?”
- ChatGPT replies, “Absolutely. Here are a few popular perfume options with warm and floral scents that you might enjoy,” followed by a grid of product results.
- After clicking on one of the results from Glossier, it takes the user to a product details page where it displays an image carousel, variants, price, a “Buy” button, and AI-generated summaries of “What people are saying” based on the item's reviews.
- The user can then check out on that page, without having to visit the merchant's website.
The Instant Checkout feature is powered by the Agentic Commerce Protocol, which OpenAI developed in partnership with Stripe to let AI agents handle shopping and checkout directly inside conversations through standardized merchant integrations. Initially it supports single-item purchases, but in the future it will expand to multi-item carts. 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.
At this point, it doesn't seem like the Instant Checkout feature will become widely available for all Shopify merchants this holiday season, but it's a step in the right direction that at least some stores are now live.