US ChatGpt users can make Etsy and Shopify purchases within their conversations, marking the next step towards the future of online shopping. It is both a platform that controls consumers and product discovery, recommendations and payments. In other words, Openai may be on the path of someone who holds the power of e-commerce.
Openai’s new “Instant Checkout” feature will allow free logged-in users who purchase from ChatGpt Pro and US-based Etsy sellers to purchase over a million Shopify Merchants, including Glossier, Skims, Spanx, and Vuori, to be “coming soon” for each OpenAI.
Instant Checkout is built on ChatGpt’s previous shopping features that will surface relevant products, images, reviews, prices and direct links to merchants in response to shopping questions such as “what should I get a ceramic-loving friend?” Or “The perfect sneakers to wear in the office.” Instead of leaving the conversation, users can now tap “Purchase” to view order, delivery and payment details (options include Apple Pay, Google Pay, Stripe, or credit card) to complete the purchase.
Last year, Perplexity introduced similar chat shopping and payment features. Microsoft also offers merchants the ability to create storefront functionality within chats in the Copilot Merchant program.
This type of frictionless experience can trigger new movements in the way people shop online. This moves from search engines such as e-commerce platforms such as Google and Amazon towards conversation agents with curated recommendations, comparisons and a simple checkout experience.
It also sets the stage for new power brokers to emerge in e-commerce. Google and Amazon were gatekeepers of retail discovery. If more purchases are launched within the AI chatbot, the companies behind it have suddenly got more control over which products will emerge and which committees or fees.
Amazon and Google have previously used control to back their products or preferred partners, pushing down their competitors in search results and charging sellers sharply to maintain their sights. In a blog post, Openai said the product results are “organic and underpponsored and ranked purely with users” and that it will charge merchants a “small fee” for completed purchases.
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In addition to introducing checkouts within chats, the AI company also pointed out that Openai has opened Agent Commerce Protocol (ACP), a technology that enhances instant checkouts built with Stripe, allowing other merchants and developers to integrate agent checkouts.
“Stripe is building an AI economic infrastructure,” said Gaybrick, president of Technology and Business of Stripe, in a statement. “It means rebuilding today’s commercial trading system and creating experiences with billions of people with new AI.”
Some hand over private payment information for ChatGpt, but the company says that orders, payments and fulfillment will be processed by merchants using existing systems. ChatGpt simply acts as an agent, an intermediary that can safely pass information between users and merchants.
Opening Sourcing ACP will help merchants integrate with ChatGPT and will expand the adoption of AI chatbots that act as a virtual storefront. It also expands the potential management of OpenAI as a retail discovery and checkout gatekeeper and positions the company to become a de facto architect of the AI Commerce ecosystem.
It will again be tense on Google as Tech Giant recently launched its own open protocol called Agent Payment Protocol (AP2) for purchases launched by AI agents.
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