Instant Checkout and the Agentic Commerce Protocol

openai.com

245 points by meetpateltech 2 days ago


Agentic Commerce Protocol: https://www.agenticcommerce.dev/, ChatGPT Page: https://chatgpt.com/merchants, Stripe post: https://stripe.com/blog/developing-an-open-standard-for-agen...

stephen_cagle - 2 days ago

I... i actually wouldn't be opposed to this if it meant a return to my buying things from the website of the company that makes the product.

What Amazon really nailed, and the reason I buy like 90% of things from them, is the easy and known shipping and return policy.

But the second reason I buy from Amazon is laziness. I am too lazy to look up the (often confusing) product on their company store, I'd rather just buy that product through amazon. To compound my laziness, I don't like having to once again fill out my email, home address, and credit card for the thousandth time when I go to their site.

But if I don't have to find and navigate to their site and I don't have to fill in my information for the thousandth time. Now, we are talking about me realistically considering a direct purchase.

This is likely good for the consumer, and largely good for the world (less centralization).

ahmedhawas123 - 2 days ago

I realize a lot of the comments here are pessimistic, but this is a pretty obvious monetization path that they just can't not take. This is actually a huge angle IMO. ChatGPT is on a path to become a real entry point to the internet - why use Amazon or Google Search when you can embed results and checkout in the

I agree there's a real bias issue, but that is consistent through out any large company - e.g., Google, Facebook, Amazon, etc have sponsored results

Terr_ - 2 days ago

> Agentic Commerce

I can't remember where, but someone pointed out a quirk of current AI advertising that is hard for me to un-see: In many ads, a customer appears to be middle class, but decides to save 15-60 seconds by giving their wallet to an "AI assistant" and blindly trusting it will purchase products and restaurant reservation on their behalf.

It takes some affluence to be that casually indifferent to spending-mistakes, and it seldom matches the "this could be you" person being shown.

Now, maybe it's deliberate, to owning the product will have made you wealthier, or its just a quirk of keeping ads short... but it's still weird.

efitz - 2 days ago

On chat:

I can’t afford to buy the widget now, sorry, my rent is due.

AI Agent: buying widget now. I am also canceling the lease on your apartment to improve your purchasing power.

SimianSci - 2 days ago

OpenAI desperately wants to compete at the same level as the big tech firms.

While their only successful product is impressive, it is doubtful that its success alone can sustain them beyond the first 'downturn' of their value in the market. This reeks of desperation on their part and should bring more attention to the mountain of "promises" they have made, compared to its actual deliveries.

pton_xd - 2 days ago

> Merchants pay a small fee on completed purchases, but the service is free for users

Where's the money coming from to pay the fee? From my wallet, of course! At scale, this raises the price of purchases.

Another thought -- the text-only interface of ChatGPT is way too limiting. We need images (and video) generated on demand showcasing product suggestions. Showing an image of the user wearing some new shades is going to be pretty compelling...

dzink - 2 days ago

This was bound to happen, but they will also likely see a much higher chargeback rate across the board if users are surprised when random comments or agent actions place orders or that orders placed too easily need to be reversed. Because consumers have less disposable income with all the AI-enabled layoffs, the bigger bonanza will come if OpenAI creates educational pathways via AI to enable more people to make money with AI. Entrepreneurial guides that take you step by step, accounting and other hurdles that AI can walk you through as you grow, brainstorming and exploring new business ideas, training people for a new trade or career path as employees. That will be the true game-changer that beats AGI. Because when you can give the entire society an easy ladder towards the industries that need them most, you will have a society that makes money off of AI to spend via AI shopping experience and gains purpose.

alach11 - 2 days ago

Thus far I didn't have to worry about ChatGPT having bad incentives when giving me advice on product purchases. Now that "Merchants pay a small fee on completed purchases", will the model steer me towards ACP-supported retailers at a higher rate?

rudedogg - 2 days ago

This regresses the incentives back to what we had with search engines where what I need (answers) and what OpenAI needs (money from ads) are at odds.

Search engines used to be very useful too until the endless profit a/b testing boiled us all

siva7 - 2 days ago

Ah.. the day OpenAI turned into an Ad company. We all knew it would happen someday.

datadrivenangel - 2 days ago

"Merchants pay a small fee on completed purchases, but the service is free for users, doesn’t affect their prices, and doesn’t influence ChatGPT’s product results. Instant Checkout items are not preferred in product results."

The incentives are very strong to prefer instant checkout items.

jasonsb - 2 days ago

I’ve got more money than I know what to do with and now, thanks to OpenAI, I’ve found the perfect custom-built solution: an AI agent ready to spend it for me.

jedberg - 2 days ago

> ChatGPT shows the most relevant products from across the web. Product results are organic and unsponsored, ranked purely on relevance to the user.

Cynical take, I know, but that is how Google started too. But now they prioritize people who pay them, and it's only a matter of time before OpenAI does the same.

And I can't at all blame them! They are there to make money (well, now).

But I suspect this won't be true for long.

A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 - 2 days ago

The thing is.. chatgpt can be genuinely useful. I did purposefully use it to get some some product comparisons and whatnot. It could be genuinely good if it is handled well and not devolve into constant buy blast ( like with emails and just about any other medium ).

Still, there is a reason I am frantically working on working on a more local setup that I can trust not to:

a) oversell me stuff b) is under my control c) not profile me ( in a way that can be sold to other merchants )

The issue seems to be the same as always. I am either a minority or the money pull is way too strong.

rawgabbit - 2 days ago

So in their example, OpenAI and their partner Stripe is handling the transaction? If yes, they are now competing with both Google (advertising) and Amazon/Walmart (online marketplace).

thm - 2 days ago

  "users can now buy directly from Etsy sellers"
Can't wait to buy an AI-generated coloring book via AI.
jazzyjackson - 2 days ago

The fact they're working on this is a huge signal that AGI isn't happening

Havoc - 2 days ago

Don't think I'm anywhere close to trusting agents with my money

aniviacat - 2 days ago

The ability to purchase items being added to ChatGPT seemed inevitable and now it happened.

However, as far as I can tell, it happened in the best way possible. This seems like an actual open standard, which is refreshing to see in the modern web.

Creating a common API for stores and payment processors will likely lead to increased competition, benefiting users.

I'm happy to see this. It seems to benefit all consumers, even those who do not use AI.

constantcrying - 2 days ago

Are they insane?

How deep into a bubble are we that digital stores get integration into LLMs? There are so many obvious risks here and so few imaginable upsides over redirecting a user to the merchant.

kazinator - 2 days ago

* - - - - (1 / 5) Village Idiot, Somewhere, USA. "product is not at all what chatgpt showed. returned for a refund. wanna give 0 stars but cant"

[Response from Seller] "We regret that our product doesn't meet the customer's expectations — we issued a full refund."

allears - 2 days ago

So what would a 'hallucination' be in this context? An order for a half ton of toilet paper? If I know ChatGPT gets things wrong, why would I trust it to shop for me?

Traubenfuchs - 2 days ago

> OpenAI CEO Sam Altman says GPT-5 actually scares him — 'what have we done?'

Ah, so that‘s what he actually meant.

They promised us AGI and the singularity, they delivered more ads.

cnity - 2 days ago

Rule 5: Don't be an endpoint.

https://nextbigideaclub.com/magazine/futureproof-9-rules-hum...

hmate9 - 2 days ago

In a way this was kind of inevitable, but I had hope that it was still 1-2 years away. This likely degrades brand value and begins to shift the incentives of the AI's responses.

m_a_g - 2 days ago

They really time releases based on their competition. How many times did this happen with both companies? I've lost count.

They had been keeping this in reserve and decided to release it when Anthropic released Sonnet 4.5. Anime-like tactics.

iandanforth - 2 days ago

I found and purchased a hand-made toy for my son this evening using ChatGPT searching Etsy. The search results were good and made it easy to pick from the many options. The checkout process using my stored CC hit an error (it didn't tell me what error) but when I switched to Google Pay it completed successfully. Overall a pretty nice experience as shopping goes.

ChrisArchitect - 2 days ago

So this is competing with Google's AP2 announced a few weeks ago?

https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/ai-machine-learning/a... (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45262858)

underdeserver - 2 days ago

Thus begins the age of ads in AI.

bossyTeacher - 2 days ago

Can't wait for the agent to hallucinate and while fulfilling a request to buy 2 jeans, it ends up buying 3 macbooks.

EZ-E - 2 days ago

Where is the need of agents for this topic of instant payment? I understand AI and agents can be useful to look for a product and get a consensus on the reviews.

However when it comes to instant checkout and payment, some web browsers already have auto-fill for the address and payment forms that every netizen has completed hundreds of times already. Assuming web browsers already store the information for auto-fill why not go to the next step and create a protocol to allow them to do one click payment and checkout?

In short, I don't see why this instant checkout feature should be locked behind agent usage.

stronglikedan - a day ago

It it can automatically do my returns, I'm in! It would save me so much money since there's something in me that just doesn't like doing returns. When I'm buying, I tell myself "hey, no problem, free returns!", but when it comes time to actually do the return I procrastinate until the return window closes most of the time. I don't know if it's return anxiety or what.

scottydelta - 2 days ago

I don’t see people outside US and western countries using this where there are very few credit card protections. Especially countries like India which could be a big market has a second otp based auth on all cards for each payment which wouldn’t work with this.

On top of that the avg income of an Indian user is less than 300$ per month, do you think they have a credit card? Much easier for them to ask for link and buy it themselves rather than any sort of surprise charge that can’t be refunded.

malthaus - 2 days ago

leaving the use case aside (i don't think it's needed, sensible or succesful) - i have to say i'm admiring how stripe manages to be forward thinking and takes a smart strategic position on every new wave that appears.

never full on moving the tanker like zuckerberg or a16z but always ready to sell shovels to a (potantially) viable submarket that is aligned with their mission and becoming a strategic player in that angle.

very smart.

neerajjain22 - a day ago

To me, it feels like a backward step. The opportunity was to solve for agentic shopping from anywhere in the world. Instead, they are making an Amazon clone in 2025!

Imnimo - 2 days ago

I'm just not sure that I would trust that the view/description of the item ChatGPT shows me and the thing I'm actually agreeing to buy are the same thing.

mungoman2 - 2 days ago

Wow, with this in place the incentives are enormous for OpenAI to allow sponsors to pay for a slight nudge in the recommendation this way or that.

This will replace the current ad economy.

cs702 - 2 days ago

My immediate thought is that commerce mediated by AI will quickly make "old-style" ad-tech feel non-intrusive by comparison.

But, like it or not, here it comes.

podgietaru - 2 days ago

So, if I'm understanding this correctly. The latest ChatGPT features are... That it can now message me without me talking to it, and can automatically buy things for me.

fourseventy - 2 days ago

Meh. Meta recently got rid of their instant checkout product for Instagram and Facebook where customers could buy products directly from a companies FB or IG page. Nobody was using it. I would imagine it will be the same situation here.

TradingPlaces - 2 days ago

Naive question. How does the method in the OpenAI and Stripe flow charts differ from buying from a 3rd party seller on Amazon, which requires no agent? I don’t see what the agent is doing independently in the payment part.

ChrisArchitect - 2 days ago

Associated site: https://www.agenticcommerce.dev/

Stripe post: https://stripe.com/blog/developing-an-open-standard-for-agen...

hedayet - 2 days ago

1. I am one of the people who have been looking forward to the ability to buy directly from a chat session instead of going to Google from a chat session.

2. The media began covering this 3 hours ago and $goog is just ~1% down. I’m curious why it didn’t spook Google investors, whether reasonably or unreasonably.

mercurialsolo - 2 days ago

This is a new amazon marketplace with trusted reviews. IMO having worked in commerce for a while - this opens up new avenues for merchants to work on gaming reccomendations and the trust quotient delivered.

It also opens up - ads - subscriptions - transactions

based revenue lines for OpenAI

DebtDeflation - 2 days ago

"How do I do XYZ in Python?"

ChatGPT: I've found the following Python books that contain explanations of how to complete that task. Which one would you like to purchase?"

"None. I just want an answer."

ChatGPT: Ok, perhaps you were looking to purchase a python. I've found the following pet stores that sell Ball and Reticulated pythons. Which one would you like to purchase?"

"Aaaaaarrrrrrrggggghhhhhhh"

alxfrnr - 2 days ago

So they use all the reviews and product testing they ingest to come-up with results, then they let you buy whatever they list in 1-click and bank a commission. A comission that would have gone in the pockets of an affiliate with actual hands on experience on the product (not talking about all the SEO crap of course), effectively killing the affiliates who provided the needed data for the rankings in the first place.

It also paves the way for ads in this type of answer down the line and incentivizes enshitification even further. If it would be Google doing it, everybody would raise their shields. But as openAI is still too small, we'll let it happen without saying or doing anything, right?

It hides stores/brands reputation, value-prop and differenciators, likely favoring the established big players and makes it even harder for smaller players to enter.

What about the ethics of having openAI as the gatekeeper for product/brands inclusion? Right now it mighht look like a clever business move but it establishes dangerous foundations and gives them too much power if they keep growing.

Insanity - 2 days ago

Can’t wait for being able to run industry leading LLMs locally without the threat of advertising

beAbU - 2 days ago

At this point, not allowing for sponsored recommendations (ads) would be leaving money on the table and OpenAI will for sure be accused of reneging on their fiduciary duty to the shareholders.

As much as I hate it, it's inevitable.

Liwink - 2 days ago

What percentage of e-commerce will be taken by OpenAI by the end of 2026?

It appears to me that they are already well-positioned to become the next generation of Amazon with their current user base -

* AWS -> OpenAI APIs

* Amazon -> ChatGPT Shopping

hakunin - 2 days ago

I need this for DoorDash desperately. My wife and I trying to figure out what to eat every day is one of the most annoying parts of the day. If anyone has any recommendations, would be much appreciated.

greenie_beans - 2 days ago

won't this just lead to them offering the same products for a given search, sort of like how AI homogenized writing?

"recommend me a novel about <whatever>" and it just gives you bestsellers

nojs - 2 days ago

This is likely to be a longer term play at advertising - once people are accustomed to purchasing in this way, they’ll add [sponsored] merchants in the same list.

d--b - 2 days ago

This is for the AI engineers who are loaded enough to find it funny that the system orders a lamborghini when they asked for a toy for their kids.

WastedCucumber - 2 days ago

I'm not looking forward to when there's an AI pyschosis case where it turns out ChatGPT sold a bump stock or gave a bulk discount on fertilizer.

FergusArgyll - 2 days ago

Seems like the best possible "ads-in-chatgpt" implementation. ChatGPT still gives its "Honest Opinion" but you can buy with one click.

(IIUC)

nickphx - 2 days ago

Why would anyone trust the black box to make purchasing decisions and how would that jive with current credit/debit card agreements?

ranger_danger - 2 days ago

What about ad-blockers? Are they going to lobby browser manufacturers to start enforcing immutable, cryptographically-verified pages?

throwacct - 2 days ago

"Merchants are ranked based on availability, price, quality, whether they are the maker or primary seller of that item, and whether Instant Checkout is enabled."

So, this is a race to de bottom for any SMB. If this didn't work for Instagram and Facebook, I don't think is gonna work for them neither.

What's interesting is that they're REALLY trying to see what's going to stick before the wheel stops spinning. From "AGI" and gpt5 getting Altman all "scared" of what's coming to trying to sell ads, a social media showing ai videos, among other things ("app" store with GPTs, etc.).

If there was a statement that we were in a bubble waiting to pop, this right here is plenty enough proof of that.

jspdown - 2 days ago

Looks like it's OpenAI response to Google's Agent Payment Protocol (AP2) but without the micro transaction part.

skeeter2020 - 2 days ago

This is textbook strategy, adding layer after layer of pseudo protocols and "standards" on top of (surprise, surprise) their hard to defend against competition offerings, and ironically attempt to build a moat around something that ideally is open and interoperable. I haven't ruled out that I'm actually an idiot who doesn't get it, but it sure feels like the emperor has no clothes. It's like a recent Cloudflare post about how we're using LLMs to code all wrong; we just need to build (yet more) APIs specifically for MCP servers and then have very simple tools that only use those APIs. Yet more extra effort, time and energy optimizing for someone else's benefit.

brazukadev - 2 days ago

This will only be profitable is OpenAI makes money from showing the products because the conversion rate will be bad.

rybosworld - 2 days ago

The AI of everything economy seems like it will be so deflationary that money will stop being useful.

xnx - 2 days ago

Is this OpenAI's Amazon Dash?

sneilan1 - 2 days ago

I love the little synthesizer in the square in the footer :) What an awesome easter egg..

shreddit - 2 days ago

I’m surprised free users don’t have to watch an ad spot every five messages (yet?)

philip1209 - 2 days ago

Shots fired at Google

choilive - 2 days ago

I knew this day would come.. but not this soon.

alwahi - 2 days ago

wow, i can't wait for ai to hallucinate a 10k charge for my account...

mschuster91 - 2 days ago

Holy fuck, wasn't just a few weeks ago someone here who complained about some vibe coding service wiping all the data?

The last thing I'd trust any AI agent, particularly in today's time, would be something tying directly into my bank account!

flkiwi - 2 days ago

> finding products they love

That phrase is a dead giveaway that a very silly group of people have started dominating the conversation at a given company. I don't "love" a product. I certainly don't "love" a product I'm having to resort to ChatGPT to figure out my potential relationship with. At best, I "love" having a solution to a problem that I want to spend as little time and money solving as possible, and even then it's more of a satisfactorily productive comradeship.

God this is exhausting.

threefiftyone1 - 2 days ago

Wonder what protocol is going to win

_m_p - 2 days ago

AGI achieved internally.

harmoni-pet - 2 days ago

openai speed running their enshitification

giankhand - 2 days ago

this is what NVIDIA invested $100B for!!!

cess11 - 2 days ago

"There is no need to fear or hope, but only to look for new weapons."

Gilles Deleuze, Postscript on Societies of Control, 1990.

cooloo - 2 days ago

This the beginning of reversing the product chain

Where users will becomes the product.

ctkhn - 2 days ago

Who, on the user side, is asking for this? Even amazon subscribe is still buying you a product you already chose.

7thpower - 2 days ago

Wait until you see the information they’re synthesizing from your conversations and integrations.

user1999919 - 2 days ago

all hail. kneel before the altar of capitalism. may our bishop ai shepard us to the light

hsuduebc2 - 2 days ago

Pretty cool. The worry, though, is the gradual enshittification we’ve seen elsewhere: vendors buying placement in search results, and the product slowly becoming less useful for actual users. Hopefully it doesn’t go that way. The one small piece of optimism is that OpenAI isn’t a conventional shareholder-driven company forced into maximum short-term profit. For now, at least.

robotswantdata - 2 days ago

https://developers.openai.com/commerce

Yet another protocol

coffeecoders - 2 days ago

Hackernews used to dunk on Airbnb, Coinbase and Uber. Now they're part of our daily lives. Feels like we’re watching the same arc play out with LLMs.

I wonder if we’re seeing the same pattern repeat here with ChatGPT becoming big.

Outrage followed by inevitability.

rhetocj23 - 2 days ago

This reeks of desperation to generate revenue where they can, with a race against time to show profitability.

The hire of Simo and acquisition of Statsig is very present here.

nusl - 2 days ago

So who do you call when it drains your account and orders 50 tons of wood, or falls for prompt injection and pays a scammer? Will OpenAI reimbuirse you? No.

Considering how vulnerable AI is to this sort of thing, there's no way in hell I'm touching it for at least 5-10 years.

Sure, they tell you that it's safe at the bottom and give reassurances, but I'm also not going to trust them on that, just as I don't trust pretty much anything ChatGPT tells me without futher verification.

kirykl - 2 days ago

Should have always been clear the singularity will have a shopping cart

mielioort - 2 days ago

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ph4rsikal - 2 days ago

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oulipo2 - 2 days ago

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ThrownOffGame - 2 days ago

Alexa Is Listening https://m.xkcd.com/1807/

user1999919 - 2 days ago

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dougdonohoe - 2 days ago

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