OpenAI takes on Google, Amazon with new agentic shopping system (techcrunch.com)

OpenAI has rolled out “Instant Checkout” in ChatGPT for U.S. users, letting logged‑in Pro, Plus and Free users buy from Etsy sellers now (and “coming soon” to 1M+ Shopify merchants) directly inside conversations. The feature builds on ChatGPT’s product discovery—surfacing items, images, reviews and prices—and adds a one‑tap Buy flow that confirms shipping and payment (Apple Pay, Google Pay, Stripe or credit card) without leaving the chat. Orders, payments and fulfillment are processed by the merchant’s existing systems, OpenAI says, and product results are “organic and unsponsored”; merchants will pay a “small fee” per completed purchase. Technically and strategically this is significant: Instant Checkout is powered by an Agentic Commerce Protocol (ACP) built with Stripe, which OpenAI will open‑source to speed merchant and developer integration. That lowers friction for in‑chat storefronts and could accelerate a shift from search/marketplace discovery (Google, Amazon) toward conversational agents as primary retail gateways. Competitors and complements already exist—Perplexity, Microsoft Copilot Merchant Program and Google’s Agent Payments Protocol (AP2)—but ACP’s open sourcing and Stripe partnership could position OpenAI as a new e‑commerce gatekeeper, raising questions about ranking neutrality, fees, privacy of payment data, and who ultimately controls product discovery in an AI‑first shopping era.