Buy It In ChatGPT? We’ll See.

OpenAI announced its Agentic Commerce Protocol on September 29, 2025. Consumers will see Instant Checkout (powered by Stripe). What’s interesting - if this works as advertised - is a protocol that supports consumers, businesses, and agents or any combination thereof. Even if consumers use agents for a minority of purchases, using an agent to make a purchase will be a thing - maybe not a big thing. 

A few thoughts:

• Commerce leaders like Amazon, Walmart, eBay and others have now spent decades facilitating shopping experiences for consumers. This reminds me a bit of Amazon’s Fire smartphone experience a decade ago. 

• Just because consumers use a prompt box to find information, solicit advice, or edit their emails, doesn’t mean they will use it for shopping. 

• Just 2.1% of OpenAI’s ChatGPT use the tool to find purchasable products. On a base of 700M, that can be a lot. I do imagine fragmentation across products and geographies. 

• Just like Google monetized consumer search information, so too can OpenAI. I wouldn’t want to discount any visions they have of monetizing my data to sell ads. That would be a matter of time. 

Snarky sidenote … the example in the press release is consumers shopping for “best running shoes under $100.” That is not how runners buy running shoes. And they cost more than $100. Maybe a parent buying sneakers for a child. My first take on the experience - slow. Second, the bot doesn’t ask qualifying questions before spending quite a long time searching. Does offer after the initial result. I do like the side-by-side photos. Reminds me more of Google’s Shopping experience (not a huge success) rather than a polished eCommerce company’s. I don’t know what to make of my Etsy query for an orange ceramic mug. I'm not even sure I'd call this a beta yet.