PayPal announced on Tuesday that it will adopt a new protocol combined with OpenAI’s “Instant Checkout” feature. This integration will allow users to pay for their shopping directly within ChatGPT, starting in 2026.
PayPal is implementing the Agentic Commerce Protocol, an open-source specification developed by OpenAI. This protocol enables merchants to make their products available inside AI applications, which allows users to shop using AI agents. Separately, OpenAI’s “Instant Checkout” feature, launched in September, lets users confirm their order, shipping, and payment details to complete purchases without leaving the ChatGPT environment.
Customers will be able to use their PayPal wallets for checkout. The company stated this will allow it to provide buyer and seller protection, as well as dispute resolution services. PayPal is also providing the technology to handle card payments from within ChatGPT using a separate payments application programming interface.
Starting next year, merchants who use PayPal products will have their products discoverable on ChatGPT. This will begin with categories such as apparel, fashion, beauty, home improvement, and electronics. Merchants will not need to build any special integrations, as PayPal will manage merchant routing and payments behind the scenes.
The company also said it is launching an agentic commerce suite. This suite will let merchants feature their catalogs within AI apps, accept payments across different AI applications, and gain insights about consumer behavior.
PayPal has been working to establish itself as a payments partner within various companies’ AI-enabled shopping experiences. This effort comes as people increasingly use AI apps for their daily tasks. In May, the company partnered with Perplexity to let users checkout within that AI search tool. Then in September, PayPal said it was adopting Google’s Agent Payments Protocol to integrate its products within various Google services.
Apart from the commerce partnership, PayPal is giving enterprise access to ChatGPT to all of its employees. The company is also allowing its engineers to make better use of OpenAI’s coding tools, known as Codex.
Alex Chriss, the president and CEO of PayPal, said that hundreds of millions of people turn to ChatGPT each week for help with everyday tasks, including finding products. He also noted that over 400 million people use PayPal to shop. He added that by partnering with OpenAI and adopting the Agentic Commerce Protocol, PayPal will power payments and commerce experiences that help people go from chat to checkout in just a few taps for their joint customer bases.