ChatGPT Just Changed Online Sales Forever With Agentic Commerce

OpenAI recently announced its new Instant Checkout feature within ChatGPT. It’s a game-changer for anyone involved in E-commerce, with the potential to fundamentally reshape how consumers buy on the internet.

ChatGPT users are now able to buy directly from US Etsy sellers without ever leaving the chat.

If they’re using AI to browse, they can use AI to buy.

“Instant Checkout” searches have spiked.

That’s big news for the 5.4 million people with an Etsy store. But the consequences could be significantly further-reaching than that, thanks to something OpenAI is calling the Agentic Commerce Protocol.

This protocol, which is being open-sourced, will allow any online seller to make their storefront available via ChatGPT and other AI agents. Agentic commerce is a new era of e-commerce.

In this article, we’ll explore how Instant Checkout and the Agentic Commerce Protocol are set to disrupt the online sales industry. And we’ll explain what e-commerce sellers need to do in order to seize this potentially massive opportunity.

Instant Checkout Launches New Era for ChatGPT

Instant Checkout is OpenAI’s first step into agentic commerce. It is certainly not a tentative one.

ChatGPT is already well-established as a tool for product research. An Exploding Topics survey found that 63% of AI users are harnessing the technology for research purposes.

On top of that, more than 700 million people use ChatGPT every week. That’s a huge market of potential customers for online stores.

But up until now, actually buying a product meant leaving ChatGPT, going to a third-party website, and manually completing the external checkout process. That created a certain amount of friction within the funnel.

With Instant Checkout, this friction has been eliminated for all US Etsy sellers. That’s significant: 74% of Etsy’s gross merchandise sales come from the US, amounting to over $2 billion in Q2 2025 alone.

And OpenAI has far bigger plans for Instant Checkout. Over 1 million Shopify merchants are also going to be included soon, including brands like SKIMS, Spanx, Glossier, and Vuori.

“Vuori” now attracts 1 million searches per month.

Instant Checkout also has plans to expand to more regions. Before too long, it could be the way the world shops.

And what’s in it for OpenAI? A “small fee” on all completed purchases, mirroring the model observed in the rise in social commerce on platforms like TikTok Shop.

Both innovations are ultimately about meeting the buyer where they are at, creating a better experience for the user, and driving more sales opportunities for the retailer.

Optimizing for Instant Checkout

It’s not just Etsy sellers who need to start thinking about optimizing for Instant Checkout. With the Shopify rollout, more and more online stores are set to be included, and you need to put your brand in the best possible position to capitalize.

It’s a process known as AI optimization, or AI SEO. Just as you would optimize your e-commerce store to appear in Google, you can take steps to improve your visibility in tools like ChatGPT.

“AI SEO” searches are forecast to keep rising steeply.

In an example provided by OpenAI in its Instant Checkout press release, a user searches for “best running shoes under $100”. This is what’s known as a non-branded query: it does not mention a brand by name, but the results it returns will link to various brands.

Previously, ChatGPT would serve as a helpful comparison tool, but users would have to go off-site to complete a purchase. Now, users with Instant Checkout enabled will be able to buy directly from the ChatGPT interface.

Initially, this will only be enabled for individual products. But multi-item carts are set to be added in due course.

As an e-commerce retailer, it was already important to be picking up mentions from these non-branded queries. But now that consumers can buy straight from ChatGPT, it is effectively non-negotiable.

Semrush AI SEO Toolkit allows you to track your AI visibility. You can see the specific prompts that lead to mentions for your brand across ChatGPT, Google AI Mode, and AI Overviews.

You can also conduct prompt research to see what questions users are asking AI about your products. And competitor research helps to surface any gaps in your AI visibility.

In an era of agentic commerce, a tool like this is potentially invaluable. My colleague Osama’s guide to optimizing for AI shopping is a useful resource.

The Agentic Commerce Protocol

Instant Checkout alone would be something of a game-changer for e-commerce. But the Agentic Commerce Protocol takes OpenAI’s announcement from disruptive to transformative.

Built alongside Stripe, the protocol underpins Instant Checkout. But OpenAI is open-sourcing it, meaning it will ultimately be available to power thousands of similar systems.

Merchants who already use Stripe will be able to integrate the Agentic Commerce Protocol in as little as one line of code. However, that isn’t a precondition for eligibility: the protocol will support a wide range of payment processors.

Not only that, it will also support a wide range of AI agents. According to OpenAI’s developer guidance, businesses can use the protocol to “transact with any AI agent and payment processor”.

In other words, this is bigger than just ChatGPT. Merchants will be able to make their products not only discoverable but also purchasable in any AI chatbot, regardless of how they process their payments and which AI agents their potential customers are using.

How Does the Agentic Commerce Protocol Work?

The Agentic Commerce Protocol works by granting AI agents access to merchant product feeds.

Merchants supply a regularly refreshed feed containing price details, availability, and checkout status, as well as additional details like rich media and product reviews. Chatbots are then able to present this information to users within their own interfaces.

With the user’s approval, the AI agent (ChatGPT, in the case of Instant Checkout) then supplies payment information to the merchant. From here, the payment is processed as usual, with success or failure communicated back to the chatbot.

Confirmation or rejection of the order is then confirmed to the user via the AI chatbot.

In short, the AI chatbot essentially acts as a middleman, supplying information that the user would previously have given directly to the merchant. But the extra step serves to make the shopping experience more seamless, because it allows users to research and buy in the same place.

Other Agentic Commerce Tools

OpenAI has brought the term “agentic commerce” into popular use with the launch of its protocol. But ChatGPT is not the first chatbot to get shopping capabilities.

Perplexity released Buy with Pro for its paid users back in November of 2024. In essence, it’s a similar proposition to Instant Checkout.

“Perplexity Shopping” searches.

Product links are not sponsored. But when merchants have opted into the Perplexity Merchant Program, users will be able to buy their products directly from Perplexity if and when the chatbot organically recommends them.

Putting it behind the Pro plan has naturally limited the potential uptake. But to reflect its status as a premium feature, Perplexity’s shopping scheme automatically gives its users free shipping on all orders, even when such a perk is not offered by the merchant.

As recently as September 16, Google announced its Agent Payments Protocol, AP2. This has a lot in common with the Agentic Commerce Protocol.

AP2 is a method of carrying out transactions led by AI agents. It’s designed to work across all payment methods, and big names from both retail (Etsy is involved here as well) and payment processing (PayPal, Revolut, Mastercard, etc.) have collaborated on the project.

And from the payment side of the ecosystem, Visa has launched Intelligent Commerce. Again, this is designed to facilitate secure payments from AI agents on behalf of users.

Unlike the others, Visa’s system is not payment-agnostic. But for merchants who accept Visa, Intelligent Commerce establishes a system of verification that allows agents to make pre-authorized payments.

This enables users to buy directly from chatbot interfaces, set up instructions for future payments (e.g. when tickets for a live event go on sale), and access more personalized experiences based on shopping history.

So OpenAI’s Agentic Commerce Protocol will need to overcome some competition in order to gain widespread usage.

But given the dominant market position of ChatGPT, and the subsequent exposure that Instant Checkout will get, it seems likely that OpenAI’s innovation is the one that will really kick-start the era of agentic commerce.

And the rush to create these features tells its own story. Regardless of which specific tools end up gaining widespread adoption, it’s clear that major players in both AI and E-commerce are convinced that agentic commerce is the future of retail.

Will Users Trust AI With Payment Details?

As well as potential competition, the Agentic Commerce Protocol will need to overcome potential user skepticism if AI shopping is to become truly widespread. At its core, it relies on users trusting AI agents with payment details.

But this is unlikely to be a major obstacle. Users have repeatedly demonstrated that they will opt for the convenience of AI tools even when they have doubts about their reliability or security.

In an Exploding Topics study, we found that only 8.5% of users always trust AI Overviews.

OpenAI is still doing as much as possible to allay any trust issues. It has highlighted three important factors about the Agentic Commerce Protocol:

• Users explicitly confirm each step before any action is taken
• Payment is secured with encrypted tokens
• Only the essential data required to complete an order is shared with the merchant

It would be fair to suggest that this makes the protocol more secure than something like TikTok Shop.

TikTok has been hit with a US ban amid government security concerns, a decision that was upheld by the Supreme Court.

And yet, with the ban deadline repeatedly pushed back, users have shown no appetite to rein in their spending. In fact, monthly TikTok Shop GMV in the US surpassed $1 billion in March-June 2025.

Between the OpenAI safeguards and the overwhelming convenience factor, I predict that agentic commerce will take off very quickly as the infrastructure around it begins to take shape.

You Can’t Ignore Agentic Commerce

With a single press release from OpenAI, 700 million weekly ChatGPT users just got access to more than 5 million Etsy stores.

It’s impossible to overstate the impact that Instant Checkout, and particularly the Agentic Commerce Protocol, could have on e-commerce. At a stroke, OpenAI may have just changed how consumers shop.

Adoption will be gradual at first, especially while features like multi-cart checkout are yet to be rolled out. But as more merchants sign up for Instant Checkout and more companies begin to build on the Agentic Commerce Protocol, AI shopping will surge.

It could even become the norm. When you think about how quickly AI has become embedded in everyday routines, the potential is clear.

And that means merchants simply cannot afford to stand still. Optimizing for AI now will provide a massive first-mover advantage, while neglecting chatbots will mean getting left behind.

Sign up for Semrush to try out the AI SEO Toolkit. It’s an elite tool for tracking when and why your e-commerce brand is being mentioned by chatbots, and providing actionable insights on how to improve your visibility.

AI mentions could now mean AI sales, and the time to act is now.