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ChatGPT Can Influence Shopping — But Not the Payment
OpenAI already showed last year that it wants to be strongest in the product selection phase. ChatGPT compares products, refines requirements, looks for differences between alternatives, and clarifies what matters most to the customer. This is exactly the part where ChatGPT can provide the most value.
What is changing now is not the role of AI in shopping, but where the purchase is finalised.
Instead of completing the order directly in the chat, transactions will more often be redirected to merchant and partner applications connected to ChatGPT. From the customer perspective, this clearly reflects how people actually use the tool.
People like using ChatGPT to explore options, but when it comes to completing the purchase, they go elsewhere.
The Evolution of Shopping in ChatGPT
January 2025: OpenAI introduced Operator, an agent capable of performing tasks in a web browser on behalf of the user, such as ordering groceries or filling out forms.
April 2025: ChatGPT received new shopping features — product recommendations, reviews, images, and purchase links — allowing OpenAI to enter the product selection phase more prominently.
July 2025: Reports emerged that OpenAI was also working on its checkout system in ChatGPT so purchases could be completed directly in chat and the company could earn commissions.
September 2025: OpenAI officially launched Instant Checkout, initially for purchases from selected Etsy sellers in the U.S., representing the first public “agentic commerce” solution directly in ChatGPT.
November 2025: The company added a shopping research feature, where ChatGPT helps compare products and prepares a personalised shopping guide, further strengthening the decision-making phase.
December 2025: Early numbers suggested that purchases via ChatGPT were not particularly convincing. While traffic increased, the conversion rate was only 1.18%, the average order value €41.89, and the cart abandonment rate as high as 77.45%.
March 2026: OpenAI began stepping back from direct checkout in ChatGPT and increasingly redirecting purchases to third-party partner applications.
The Weakest Point Appeared Exactly Where E-commerce Is Hardest
While product recommendations and comparisons are relatively natural within a chat environment, checkout is a different discipline. At that stage, factors such as accurate pricing, availability, shipping, tax settings, payment processing, and the entire post-purchase service become critical. That is why OpenAI is now focusing more on shopping discovery and moving away from the original idea of handling the entire transaction process itself.
Even when the shopping features were expanded in April, it was already clear that the company was focusing primarily on recommendations, reviews, images, and purchase links — not on managing the full transactional process.
Product Data, Descriptions, and Reviews Now Matter More
This means we do not need to chase the idea of completing purchases directly inside AI at all costs. What matters more is whether your products can be easily discovered, compared, and understood in such environments. If customers start making decisions in ChatGPT, then it will not only be advertising or search results that matter, but also how well an e-commerce store structures its product data, descriptions, specifications, and reviews.
This is because OpenAI builds its shopping results primarily on structured data from third-party sources.
