PayPal announced on Tuesday its plans to integrate the Agentic Commerce Protocol (ACP) alongside OpenAI’s “Instant Checkout” feature, enabling users to make purchases directly within ChatGPT beginning in 2026. This open-source protocol, developed by OpenAI, allows merchants to showcase their products within AI applications, facilitating a more streamlined shopping experience for users interacting with AI agents.
The “Instant Checkout” feature, which was launched in September, allows users to confirm their order details, including shipping and payment information, without leaving the ChatGPT interface. By utilizing their PayPal wallets, customers will benefit from key protections such as buyer and seller safety and dispute resolution, while PayPal will also introduce a separate payments API to support card transactions directly within ChatGPT.
Starting in the upcoming year, merchants who use PayPal will have the opportunity for their products to be prominently featured in ChatGPT searches, covering areas like apparel, fashion, beauty, home improvement, and electronics. This integration simplifies the process for merchants, as there will be no need for additional development work; PayPal will manage routing and payments seamlessly in the background.
In addition to this new commerce initiative, PayPal is launching an agentic commerce suite. This capability will allow merchants to display their catalogs within various AI applications, accept payments through those applications, and gain insights into consumer behavior.
PayPal has been proactive in positioning itself as a crucial payment partner in the evolving world of AI-enabled shopping experiences. Earlier this year, the company collaborated with Perplexity to facilitate checkouts within the AI search tool, and in September, announced its adoption of Google’s Agent Payments Protocol to further integrate its services within Google products.
Beyond commerce, PayPal is enhancing its internal capabilities by providing enterprise access to ChatGPT for all employees, enabling engineers to leverage OpenAI’s coding tools, Codex, to improve productivity and innovation.
As consumer reliance on AI for everyday tasks grows, PayPal’s partnership with OpenAI aims to deliver a convenient and secure shopping experience that streamlines the journey from chat to checkout. Alex Chriss, PayPal’s president and CEO, emphasized that this collaboration will enhance the payment and commerce landscape for millions of users, making it easier and faster to discover and purchase preferred products.