OpenAI just turned ChatGPT into a shopping cart. On September 29, 2025, the company launched Instant Checkout—allowing U.S. users to buy products directly within ChatGPT without ever leaving the chat interface.
Currently live with Etsy sellers, with over a million Shopify merchants (including major brands like Glossier, SKIMS, Spanx, and Vuori) announced as “coming soon”. Etsy’s stock jumped 16% on the news, and Shopify climbed 6%.
Everyone’s celebrating a new revenue channel reaching 700 million weekly ChatGPT users. But here’s what the celebration is missing: e-commerce brands are about to hand over their most valuable asset—their customer relationship—to an AI middleman.
The Technical Reality Nobody’s Talking About
OpenAI built Instant Checkout on something called the Agentic Commerce Protocol, developed with Stripe. When someone places an order, ChatGPT sends the transaction details to the merchant’s backend. The merchant processes payment through their existing provider and handles fulfillment.
Sounds simple. Until you consider what actually happens:
- Zero brand touchpoints before purchase. The customer asks ChatGPT for “running shoes under $100,” sees your product, and clicks buy.
- They never visit your site, never see your brand story, and never experience your custom checkout flow that you spent $50k optimizing.
- Customer data flows through OpenAI first. Payment information is processed by Stripe and not stored by OpenAI, and merchants receive order information to complete orders.
- But OpenAI controls the interface. They see the shopping behavior. They know what worked.
Product ranking controlled by AI. Product results are ranked purely on relevance to the user. When ranking multiple merchants selling the same product, ChatGPT considers factors like availability, price, quality, whether a merchant is the primary seller, and whether Instant Checkout is enabled.
That last part? “Whether Instant Checkout is enabled” factors into merchant ranking. Translation: enable their system or risk being ranked lower than competitors who do.
The Revenue Model You’re Signing Up For
Merchants pay a small fee on completed purchases. OpenAI won’t disclose the exact percentage fees are determined through confidential contracts with partners like Etsy and Shopify.
So you’re paying an unknown percentage to OpenAI, on top of your payment processor fees, on top of your platform fees, for the privilege of having zero brand interaction with customers who buy through their interface.
Every merchant who signs up validates this model. Every transaction proves OpenAI can extract margin from e-commerce without building, warehousing, or shipping a single product.
What This Means for Your Technical Stack
Right now, Instant Checkout supports single-item purchases only. Multi-item carts are coming next.
Think about your current checkout experience:
- Upsells and cross-sells during cart review
- Abandoned cart email sequences
- First-purchase discount codes
- Email capture for marketing automation
- Post-purchase surveys and reviews
- Loyalty program enrollment
None of that happens when someone buys through ChatGPT. OpenAI explicitly states that merchants cannot sign customers up for marketing emails from orders placed through ChatGPT.
You get the order. You ship the product. That’s it. No email for cart abandonment sequences. No ability to market to that customer again unless they voluntarily come to your site.
OpenAI positioned this as protecting users, but the result is simple: you’re paying for a customer acquisition that doesn’t actually acquire a customer relationship.
The Integration Reality
If a merchant already processes payments with Stripe, they can enable agentic payments with minimal code changes. OpenAI is promoting how easy this is to implement.
But easy implementation doesn’t mean smart implementation. Before you integrate, ask:
- How does this integrate with your order management system?
- What happens to your attribution tracking?
- How do you measure customer lifetime value when you can’t retarget them?
- What’s your cost per acquisition including the OpenAI fee?
- How do you handle returns and customer service through an AI interface?
For Magento merchants especially: your platform wasn’t built with AI middlemen in mind. Your checkout flow, customer segmentation, and marketing automation assume direct customer interaction. Adding ChatGPT checkout without reworking your systems creates data gaps you’ll regret later.
Shopify and BigCommerce merchants face similar challenges. The difference is that Shopify merchants are “automatically eligible” for Instant Checkout once it fully launches—no integration required. That sounds convenient until you realize you’re automatically opted into a system that fundamentally changes how you acquire customers.
The Real Question
This isn’t about whether AI commerce is coming. It is. The question is: should your brand be the one validating OpenAI’s business model?
OpenAI is open-sourcing the Agentic Commerce Protocol so more merchants and developers can build integrations. They’re positioning this as democratizing AI commerce.
What they’re actually doing is creating a new distribution channel they control—where they set the rules, determine the rankings, and extract fees from transactions—while merchants compete to be featured.
Google did this with search. Amazon did this with marketplace. Now OpenAI wants to do it with conversational AI. The difference? With Google and Amazon, you still owned the customer relationship once they reached your site. With ChatGPT Instant Checkout, you might never get that chance.
What E-Commerce Brands Should Do
Don’t rush to enable this because competitors are. Instead:
- Evaluate the actual customer acquisition cost. Factor in the OpenAI fee, lost marketing opportunities, and reduced lifetime value from one-time buyers you can’t retarget.
- Test with low-margin products first. If you’re going to experiment, do it with inventory you’re comfortable selling at reduced profitability.
- Maintain your owned channels. Your website, email list, and customer data remain your most valuable assets. Don’t sacrifice them for short-term sales volume.
- Watch the platform players. Shopify’s 6% stock jump tells you who really wins here. If you’re on Shopify, you’re paying them, paying OpenAI, and paying your payment processor. Calculate whether there’s margin left.
- Plan for post-purchase gaps. ChatGPT handles the transaction but not what comes after. A customer who buys through ChatGPT can’t ask it about order status, shipping delays, or returns—ChatGPT has no access to your backend systems. You’ll need separate support infrastructure to handle these inquiries, which adds another cost layer to your ChatGPT acquisition channel.
The Bottom Line
OpenAI built something technically impressive. The system allows users to go from chat to checkout in just a few taps. For consumers, it’s convenient. For e-commerce brands, it’s a trade-off worth examining carefully.
You’re not just adopting a new sales channel. You’re funding the development of a system designed to sit between you and your customers permanently.
Before you sign up, ask yourself: Is accessing ChatGPT’s audience worth giving up direct relationships with the customers who buy from you? Because once you validate that model, there’s no going back.
| Feature | Direct-to-Consumer (Your Site) | ChatGPT Instant Checkout |
| Customer Experience | Fully branded; custom UX & storytelling | Zero brand touchpoints; standard chat interface |
| Product Ranking | Controlled by your merchandising strategy | Controlled by AI relevance & “enabled” status |
| Data Ownership | Full behavioral data & pixel tracking | Data flows through OpenAI; you only get order info |
| Marketing & Retention | Email capture, retargeting, loyalty sign-ups | Prohibited. No email signup or ability to market |
| Cart Strategy | Multi-item carts with upsells/cross-sells | Single-item purchases only (currently) |
| Cost Structure | Platform Fee + Payment Processor | Platform Fee + Payment Processor + OpenAI Fee |
| Post-Purchase Support | Integrated; customer contacts you directly | Disconnected; customer cannot ask ChatGPT for help |
Current Status (November 2025)
What’s Live Now:
- U.S. Etsy sellers can process transactions through ChatGPT Instant Checkout
- Available to U.S. ChatGPT Plus, Pro, and Free users
- Single-item purchases only
- Payment via credit card, Apple Pay, Google Pay, or Link by Stripe
What’s Coming Soon:
- Over 1 million Shopify merchants (including Glossier, SKIMS, Spanx, Vuori, Steve Madden)
- Multi-item shopping carts
- Expanded merchant types beyond Etsy and Shopify
- International expansion (currently U.S. only)
What Remains Unclear:
- Exact fee structure (confidential contracts with each platform)
- Timeline for Shopify merchant rollout
- How ChatGPT will handle complex product customization
- Long-term impact on traditional e-commerce conversion rates
About Digital Mully
We help e-commerce brands and development teams make data-driven decisions about platform adoption, technical implementation, and revenue optimization.
Before jumping into new channels like ChatGPT Instant Checkout, we recommend thorough cost-benefit analysis that accounts for lifetime value, not just transaction volume.
Need help evaluating whether ChatGPT commerce makes sense for your specific business model? Let’s talk about your technical stack, customer acquisition costs, and retention strategy first.