by Matt Rej
OpenAI revolutionized the AI space when ChatGPT went mainstream, and they’ve been a pioneer in the industry ever since. So it was no surprise when they entered the agentic commerce race alongside Perplexity, Gemini, and Copilot.
They rolled out the “Instant Checkout” feature back in September 2025, promoted as a way for people to complete the entire purchase process directly within ChatGPT.
But six months later, they pivoted. Instant Checkout had problems, particularly on the payments side of the transaction.
Businesses selling online need to pay attention to this. I’ll break down everything that’s happening below.
OpenAI’s Original Plan for Agentic Commerce
OpenAI’s Instant Checkout was built on the Agentic Commerce Protocol (ACP), which was co-developed with Stripe.
The concept was relatively simple. Anyone shopping online could do everything they needed from a single ChatGPT chat.
No switching tabs. No redirecting to different websites. And most importantly, the actual transaction itself (including the payment) could be completed through the same chat as well. If a user found a product they wanted that was supported by Instant Checkout, all they had to do was click the “Buy” button in ChatGPT and it was all set.
The service was free to users, but businesses enrolled in the program paid a “small fee” (on top of their existing merchant fees).
What Changed
Last week OpenAI announced that they were changing the way they support agentic commerce. Rather than trying to keep the entire purchase process in a single chat, they’ve shifted their focus to product discovery in ChatGPT.
This means that payments happening inside ChatGPT are completely gone.
Here’s how it works now:
- Users can describe what they’re looking to buy in ChatGPT
- They can add budget constraints, preferences, and upload images
- Products are recommended and can be compared side-by-side
- Key details like prices and reviews are also included in the results
Once they find what they want, they’re redirected to the merchant’s website to complete the purchase.
For businesses, this means that you’re still in control of your own checkout without the added layer of ChatGPT and the extra fees.
It’s essentially the same thing that Google Shopping has done for years. Buyers get help during the browsing process but then get passed off to the merchant for the sale.
The Problems With Instant Checkout
Instant Checkout just didn’t live up to its promises. And OpenAI admitted it.
In fact, they explicitly said that “The initial version of Instant Checkout did not offer the level of flexibility that we aspire to provide.”
First, ChatGPT had trouble enrolling merchants in Instant Checkout. They needed merchants to enroll because simply scraping their sites for data was insufficient for things like inventory levels, estimated delivery, and shipping costs.
But even once merchants were enrolled, the issues persisted.
Walmart was one of the biggest players to partner with OpenAI on this venture. After offering roughly 200,000 products available to purchase within ChatGPT, Walmart found that the conversion rates on those items were 3x lower than its own website.
OpenAI also hadn’t built a system to collect sales tax on products purchased in Instant Checkout, which further points to infrastructure gaps within the platform.
What This Means for Merchants and Fees
I think this is actually good news for merchants. Your products can still be found by customers via ChatGPT, and you get to control the checkout experience without any extra fees.
Here’s how your products can show up:
- ChatGPT can crawl and index your site (like they do for general web searches)
- Merchant product feeds, which require you to submit your catalog in a specific format
- Sellers on Etsy are included by default, and Shopify merchants are gradually being added through a native integration
Submitting your product feed is the best option because it gives you more control. You can do nothing and just hope that ChatGPT indexes your site properly and displays your items in results for the right searches. But it’s not guaranteed.
It’s also worth noting that Amazon has intentionally blocked ChatGPT from crawling its product catalog. In simple terms, this means that Amazon product listings won’t appear in ChatGPT results at all.
How This Impacts the Big Picture for Agentic Commerce
ChatGPT’s Instant Checkout sounded too good to be true when it was announced.
Its failure is a bit of a check for everyone in the AI, tech, and payments space. The fact that a company with this many resources couldn’t get it to work definitely says something.
Additionally, if businesses lose control over the checkout it’s just going to be even more fees on top of already inflated merchant fees.
None of this means that agentic commerce is dead. And the initial vision of what OpenAI wanted to achieve will probably come to fruition down the road.
Merchants should be prepared to plan accordingly. Just maybe not as quickly as initially predicted.
For now, take control of your checkout process and payment stack while you still can. Make sure everything is smooth and friction-free for your customers. And make sure you’re not overpaying on merchant fees.