Amazon and Google should be nervous—because OpenAI just launched something that could flip online shopping on its head.
It’s called Instant Checkout, and it makes the whole idea of a shopping cart feel ancient.
Here’s the gist: instead of hunting through endless tabs or juggling logins, you just chat. Inside a ChatGPT conversation, you can literally type: “Find me a gift for my friend who’s into ceramics.”
And when something catches your eye? You just hit Buy—and that’s it.
Right now, it’s rolling out in the U.S. with Etsy sellers, and Shopify integration is coming soon. That’s over a million stores—think Glossier, Skims, Spanx—just a chat message away.
Here’s the part that made us raise an eyebrow: payments. Like, do we really want to hand over our credit card info to ChatGPT?
According to OpenAI, transactions run through Apple Pay, Google Pay, Stripe, or plain old credit cards. The payment is processed by the merchant, not OpenAI. So yeah ChatGPT only acts as the middleman, securely passing the info along. But then again does that info include card details? because honestly, this could go sideways in about a thousand ways.
But here’s where it gets really interesting:
If you’re shopping inside ChatGPT, you’re not shopping on Google or Amazon anymore.
And for years, those two giants have controlled what products we see, who gets buried, and—of course—they take a fat cut. But OpenAI’s move is a direct challenge to that system.
And they’re playing it differently:
No sponsored rankings.
No “pay to win.”
Products show up purely on relevance.
Merchants only pay a tiny fee when someone actually buys. Compare that to Amazon’s “pay for visibility” model, and it’s a massive shift.
And they’re not stopping there. OpenAI is open-sourcing the Agentic Commerce Protocol—the system powering Instant Checkout—built in partnership with Stripe. That means other developers and merchants can plug into this same infrastructure.
Zoom out, and you’ll see this isn’t just a shopping shortcut.
It’s the beginning of a new internet economy—where buying things happens through AI, not search engines or retail giants.
Of course, this isn’t a first in the AI space.
Last year, Perplexity introduced a similar in-chat shopping and payments feature.
Microsoft now offers merchants the ability to create in-chat storefronts through its Copilot Merchant Program.
Google recently launched its own Agent Payments Protocol—which sounds like, well… the same idea with a slightly different name.
And Amazon? They haven’t made a big move yet, but if history tells us anything, they don’t like losing ground.
So here’s the bigger picture:
AI isn’t just making it easier to impulse-buy at 2 a.m.—it’s reshaping who controls the storefront of the internet.
And if AI becomes the middleman for every purchase, then the question isn’t where you shop anymore— it’s whose AI you trust to shop for you.
So… which AI would you hand the keys to your wallet over to? 🗝️💳
You can find more info here.
