Programmable financial services company Stripe has announced that it is supporting OpenAI in rolling out a new commerce experience, namely Instant Checkout, as part of ChatGPT.
As of the announcement, ChatGPT users across the US can buy goods from US-based Etsy businesses directly in the chat. Following this, Stripe and OpenAI intend to include over a million Shopify merchants, such as Glossier, Vuori, Spanx, and SKIMS. This advancement in the development of AI-enabled commerce is supported by the Agentic Commerce Protocol (ACP), a new, merchant-focused open standard co-created by Stripe and OpenAI.
The move comes during a period when more people leverage AI tools in their everyday lives, with interfaces like ChatGPT becoming a new kind of storefront. Merchants can now convert AI-driven discovery into a sale.
How does this work?
According to Stripe, the checkout experience is set to be optimal, with the flow including a ChatGPT user asking for product recommendations in the chat, and when they are ready to buy, they are shown a Stripe-enabled checkout inline. After the buyer leverages their preferred payment method, Stripe issues a Shared Payment Token (SPT), a new payment primitive that allows applications to initiate a payment without exposing the user’s payment credentials. SPTs are associated with a specific merchant and cart total, and after being issued, ChatGPT passes the token to the merchant through an API. The transaction is then processed through Stripe, or, if preferred, the payment can be managed by another provider, while still benefiting from the company’s risk scores for fraud protection. As part of this process, ChatGPT acts as the buyer’s AI agent, supporting them in buying from businesses similar to how a personal shopper would.
Furthermore, orders go from ChatGPT to a merchant’s backend via ACP, with the latter being able to accept or deny the order, charge the payment method, calculate and remit sales tax, and manage fulfilment and returns. By launching Instant Checkout, Stripe and OpenAI aim to deliver a simplified commerce experience inside ChatGPT for consumers, as well as an additional sales channel for businesses.
Further details on ACP
With the world shifting from traditional ecommerce to AI-led commerce, where agents act for the buyer, carrying their identity, payment method, and purchase context into the transaction, Stripe and OpenAI have been working on supporting this move. The two companies have developed ACP, which facilitates a shared language between businesses and AI agents. Through a single integration, merchants are set to be able to start selling through AI agents while maintaining control over what is sold, how their brand appears, and how orders are fulfilled.
ACP focuses on delivering the standardisation required for businesses to take part in agentic commerce while preserving customer relationships and their existing systems. Additionally, ACP comes as an open standard, with businesses not processing with Stripe being able to adopt it with their existing payment providers.
