OpenAI’s early push to enable purchases directly inside ChatGPT is being reworked, after retailers initially moved quickly to support the company’s Instant Checkout tool, according to CNBC.
When OpenAI introduced Instant Checkout last September, Etsy, Walmart, and Shopify signed up to allow users to buy products within the chatbot, adding momentum to the idea of AI “shopping agents” that can handle the purchasing process for consumers.
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Months later, OpenAI and its retail partners are changing course. The company is moving away from Instant Checkout and is instead collaborating with retailers on dedicated apps inside ChatGPT, according to the report.
Under the revised model, shoppers will be directed to a retailer’s own website to finish a transaction, an approach designed to provide merchants more oversight of how checkout works and how customers experience the process.
An OpenAI spokesperson said the company is focusing on improving search and product discovery within ChatGPT, areas where it has seen early user adoption.
“Instant Checkout is moving to Apps, where purchases can happen more seamlessly,” the spokesperson was quoted as saying.
OpenAI, which has also been pushing to keep pace with competitors such as Google and Anthropic, rolled out a series of new products and experiences last year as it sought to broaden revenue sources and expand its reach.
As consumers increasingly use ChatGPT to research products, commerce has become a major potential opportunity.
Google announced updates last week to its shopping agent platform, including the ability to draw on real-time product data to reduce problems such as out-of-stocks and pricing mistakes.
Google’s updates also allow shoppers to add multiple items to baskets and link loyalty memberships, features that OpenAI has not fully delivered.
OpenAI initially presented Instant Checkout as the “next step in agentic commerce, where ChatGPT doesn’t just help you find what to buy, it also helps you buy it”.
The company said it would take “a small fee” per transaction, without providing further financial details.
Alongside Instant Checkout, OpenAI introduced an Apps SDK at its developer conference in October and began bringing retail apps into ChatGPT from Instacart, Target and several online travel agencies.
Shopify has confirmed that a new shopping flow is being developed for ChatGPT. Users will still be able to discover Shopify merchants’ products in the chatbot, but checkout will no longer happen natively in ChatGPT.
Instead, purchases will be completed through merchants’ own online stores, either via an in-app browser in the ChatGPT mobile app or through a separate browser tab on the web.
Walmart has also signalled that the initial approach is being phased out.
Speaking at Morgan Stanley’s Tech, Media & Telecom conference on 4 March, Walmart’s AI acceleration, product and design executive vice-president Daniel Danker called Instant Checkout “a very temporary moment in time”.
He comments: “What you will see is that the Sparky experience will travel directly into ChatGPT and Gemini and anybody else that we ever integrate with.”
A Walmart spokesperson later confirmed to CNBC that the retailer plans to integrate its Sparky AI assistant into ChatGPT as soon as this week.
Etsy is pursuing a similar path, with a spokesperson confirming work is underway on a ChatGPT app.
However, they added that the timeline and longer-term approach are not settled, meaning an app may not be the final method by which Etsy products are presented in ChatGPT.
The Etsy spokesperson said an app would allow more control over how shopping looks and feels inside ChatGPT.
They also said it could give retailers and marketplaces access to more shopper data earlier in the purchase journey than Instant Checkout, which they said mainly provided transaction visibility after a purchase was completed.
