Etsy’s stock jumped nearly 16% Monday after OpenAI announced something that sounds like science fiction but feels inevitable: ChatGPT can now complete purchases for you without ever leaving the chat. Your days of juggling browser tabs between AI advice and checkout pages just ended. This isn’t another chatbot upgrade—it’s AI agents becoming your personal shopping assistants with actual buying power.
Shopping Without the Website Shuffle
Stripe’s payment infrastructure handles the complex backend while you stay in the conversation.
The mechanics work like this: when you’re ready to buy something from an Etsy merchant through ChatGPT, Stripe presents an inline checkout right in the chat interface. The system uses your saved ChatGPT payment methods, creates secure payment tokens, and processes everything while keeping merchants in control of fulfillment and refunds.
No more copying product links, opening new tabs, or starting over because you forgot what the AI recommended. The underlying technology relies on the new Agentic Commerce Protocol—an open standard developed jointly by Stripe and OpenAI that lets AI agents initiate payments securely without exposing your credentials.
The Money Behind the Magic
OpenAI charges merchant fees while promising users won’t see price increases.
OpenAI takes transaction fees from merchants using Instant Checkout, though the company won’t disclose specifics. This represents a crucial new revenue stream for OpenAI, which remains unprofitable despite massive user growth.
Shopify integration comes next, bringing over one million merchants, including brands like Skims and Glossier, into the fold. Shopify’s 6% stock bump suggests investors see this as more than a novelty feature—they’re betting on a fundamental shift in how you discover and buy products online.
Your Shopping Habits Are Changing
AI agents now act as buyer representatives, shifting control from merchant websites to conversational interfaces.
With 700 million weekly ChatGPT users already asking commerce-related questions, this launch taps into existing behavior rather than creating it. “Our vision for ChatGPT is that it’s not just providing you information, it is also helping you get things done in the real world,” says Michelle Fradin, ChatGPT’s commerce product lead.
The underlying Agentic Commerce Protocol is open-source, meaning other platforms could rapidly adopt similar capabilities. Your future shopping might look less like browsing and more like chatting. Instead of merchants controlling every aspect of your purchase journey, AI agents armed with your preferences, payment methods, and purchase history could handle transactions while you focus on decisions. The protocol expansion beyond U.S. markets and multi-item carts will test whether conversational commerce becomes mainstream or remains a tech curiosity.
