PayPal announced on Tuesday that it will work with OpenAI to let users pay for their shopping directly inside ChatGPT starting in 2026. The company plans to use the Agentic Commerce Protocol (ACP), an open-source system OpenAI built to help merchants list and sell their products inside AI-powered apps. By combining this protocol with OpenAI’s “Instant Checkout” feature, shoppers will be able to confirm orders, shipping, and payment details, and complete purchases without ever leaving ChatGPT.
PayPal users can pay using their existing wallets, giving them access to buyer and seller protection and dispute resolution. PayPal will also handle card payments within ChatGPT through a separate payments API, making it easier for users to shop without switching platforms.
Next year, PayPal will start allowing merchants who use its products to have their items appear directly on ChatGPT. The rollout will begin with categories such as apparel, beauty, electronics, fashion, and home improvement. Merchants won’t need to create or manage new integrations, since PayPal will take care of routing and payments automatically behind the scenes.
The company is also building a new “agentic commerce suite” that helps merchants display their product catalogs inside AI apps, accept payments across different platforms, and access insights into consumer behavior. PayPal sees this as a step toward making AI-driven shopping experiences more natural, fast, and interactive.
The company has been steadily positioning itself as a preferred payment partner for AI-based shopping tools. Earlier this year, it partnered with Perplexity to enable checkout within its AI search tool. In September, PayPal announced that it would use Google’s Agent Payments Protocol to integrate its services across Google’s ecosystem.
Beyond payments, PayPal is also bringing OpenAI’s technology closer to its employees. The company is giving enterprise access to ChatGPT to all staff and encouraging its engineers to use OpenAI’s Codex tools to improve their productivity and coding efficiency.
“Hundreds of millions of people turn to ChatGPT each week to find products they love, and more than 400 million use PayPal to shop,” said PayPal president and CEO Alex Chriss. “By partnering with OpenAI and adopting the Agentic Commerce Protocol, PayPal will make it easier for people to go from chat to checkout in just a few taps. This partnership brings together two powerful ecosystems to create a smarter, faster shopping experience.”
