PayPal, the US payment provider, announced a strategic partnership with OpenAI and will adopt OpenAI’s agent-based business protocol."Agentic Commerce Protocol" (ACP) not only provides payment processing support for its merchants using the "Instant Checkout" function, but also plans to allow ChatGPT users to complete PayPal payments directly in the ChatGPT conversation interface starting in 2026.
Realize direct shopping experience in ChatGPT
By adopting the ACP protocol, merchants will be able to display and sell products directly within ChatGPT in the future, allowing users to shop in the form of AI agents.
Combined with PayPal's existing "Instant Checkout" feature, users will be able to seamlessly complete the entire process from order confirmation, delivery information to payment after discovering products in ChatGPT in the future, without having to leave the original ChatGPT dialogue interface.
PayPal President and CEO Alex Chriss pointed out that hundreds of millions of people use ChatGPT to find products every week, and more than 4 million people use PayPal to shop. This collaboration aims to provide this huge common customer base with a smooth experience from chatting to completing payment in just a few clicks.
PayPal expands AI-powered commerce reach with tens of millions of merchants
This partnership is a significant benefit to PayPal's vast merchant network and represents a significant step toward achieving the last mile in AI application services. PayPal will establish a platform connecting its tens of millions of small and medium-sized businesses (SMEs) and large brands worldwide to the OpenAI ecosystem.
By importing ACP, product catalogs covering a wide range of categories, including apparel, fashion, beauty, home improvement, electronics, etc., will be able to be directly connected to ChatGPT's commerce functions through PayPal's ACP server, which means that millions of products will be available for exploration and purchase through ChatGPT in the future.
Merchants benefit from PayPal handling all payment processing and routing on the backend, eliminating the need for additional integration work. Furthermore, when users shop through PayPal within ChatGPT, they also enjoy PayPal's buyer and seller protection mechanisms, as well as post-sales services such as order tracking and dispute resolution.
OpenAI strengthens platform value, while PayPal deepens internal AI applications
For OpenAI, integrating PayPal's payment functionality and protection services into ChatGPT will significantly enhance the user experience and platform value, allowing it to expand from an information acquisition and task processing tool to a platform with transaction capabilities.
Currently, the specific launch time of the service is only vaguely stated as "coming soon", and the plan to integrate the product catalog into ChatGPT through the PayPal ACP server is expected to be completed in 2026.
It is worth noting that when OpenAI previously released the Instant Checkout feature, it actually announced a partnership with another payment provider.StripeThe cooperation reached and the subsequent announcement of cooperation with PayPal will obviously expand its AI application transaction scenarios and allow ChatGPT to explore more application possibilities.
In addition to external business collaborations, PayPal also stated that it will expand its internal AI application strategy, including expanding access to "ChatGPT Enterprise" to more than 24000 employees and utilizing OpenAI's APIs (such as the Codex coding assistant) to improve internal operational efficiency.
