TLDR: PayPal has partnered with OpenAI to integrate its digital payment wallet directly into ChatGPT, enabling users to make purchases within the AI chatbot using PayPal’s Instant Checkout. This collaboration, leveraging the Agentic Commerce Protocol (ACP), aims to streamline e-commerce by allowing millions of products from PayPal’s merchant network to be discoverable and purchasable through ChatGPT, marking a significant step in AI-driven commerce.
San Jose, CA – October 28, 2025 – PayPal, a global leader in digital payments, announced today a groundbreaking partnership with OpenAI, the artificial intelligence research and deployment company behind ChatGPT. This strategic alliance will see PayPal’s digital wallet integrated directly into ChatGPT, allowing its vast user base to complete purchases seamlessly within the AI chatbot interface. The announcement, made on Tuesday, sent PayPal shares surging, with premarket trading showing an increase of over 17%, settling around an 8% gain by day’s end.
The core of this integration is the Agentic Commerce Protocol (ACP), a system designed to link businesses, shoppers, and AI agents to facilitate in-chat transactions. This protocol powers ‘Instant Checkout,’ which will enable ChatGPT users to pay using their PayPal accounts, bank accounts, balances, or linked credit and debit cards.
Alex Chriss, President and CEO of PayPal, emphasized the transformative potential of this partnership. “Hundreds of millions of people turn to ChatGPT each week for help with everyday tasks, including finding products they love, and over 400 million use PayPal to shop,” Chriss stated. “We want PayPal to be available anywhere and everywhere that consumers want to pay and we want merchants to be able to sell to consumers anywhere and everywhere.” He added that the integration will help people “go from chat to checkout in just a few taps.”
For consumers, the partnership promises a more intuitive and efficient shopping experience, with the added benefit of PayPal’s built-in buyer and seller protections, as well as tools for order tracking and problem resolution.
Merchants within PayPal’s extensive global network stand to gain significant exposure. The integration will connect tens of millions of PayPal merchants, spanning categories such as apparel, fashion, beauty, home improvement, and electronics, to ChatGPT’s massive user base, making their products discoverable and purchasable directly through the AI platform. PayPal plans to expand the use of ACP in 2026 to integrate product catalogs from small businesses and major brands into ChatGPT commerce.
This collaboration is a pivotal move in OpenAI’s broader strategy to position ChatGPT as a central hub for e-commerce. It follows recent deals with major retailers like Walmart, Etsy, and Shopify, which have already introduced in-chat purchasing capabilities, signaling a clear shift towards agent-driven retail. The market has reacted positively to these developments, with Walmart shares rising nearly 5%, Etsy climbing 16.8%, and Shopify gaining 6.2% after their respective announcements.
Beyond consumer-facing commerce, PayPal is also expanding its internal adoption of AI, providing its over 24,000 employees with access to ChatGPT Enterprise, a version tailored for business use in content creation, data analysis, and code writing.
Looking ahead, PayPal also announced a new feature called “Agent Ready,” set to launch in early 2026. This tool will allow consumers to purchase items from existing PayPal merchants on other AI-driven platforms, including Google and Perplexity, further solidifying PayPal’s commitment to agentic commerce in the evolving digital landscape.
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Analysts at Evercore ISI noted that “agentic commerce is seen by some as a potential ‘silver bullet’ to leverage PayPal’s large and global user base and reignite growth on what could be (to be proven as it’s still very early days) a next-gen commerce platform.” This sentiment underscores the industry’s growing interest in agentic AI, with recent reports indicating that 93% of US IT executives are highly interested in such technologies and 88% planning to increase their AI budgets.
