PayPal and OpenAI have formed a significant partnership that will build the digital wallet directly into ChatGPT. This will transform the way hundreds of millions of users will acquire, transact, and purchase with conversational AI. October 28, 2025, PayPal stock increased by 14% in the premarket, and investors were finding huge prospects in the collaboration.
This is a revolution in the world of e-commerce, where artificial intelligence can now manage the entire shopping experience, from product discovery to check-out, all from their conversation with ChatGPT.
The Practice of Agentic Commerce
The Agencyic Commerce Protocol (ACP) is an open-source version created by OpenAI. It allows merchants to make their products available directly in AI applications. PayPal has become the first major payment provider to implement this protocol.
When ChatGPT users inquire about product searches, whether it is running shoes or other items, they will complete their purchases instantly using their PayPal wallet. The experience is like having a personal shopper who knows what you want and processes and manages refunds and exchanges automatically. Users can withdraw funds from linked bank accounts, credit cards, and stored balances while receiving PayPal’s standard buyer protection.
Starting early in 2026, hundreds of millions of PayPal merchants across apparel, fashion, beauty, and electronics will have their catalogs discovered within ChatGPT. Individual merchants will not need separate OpenAI integrations due to PayPal’s handling of backend orchestrations.
Expanding Use of AI Commerce by PayPal
ChatGPT integration is one of PayPal’s most aggressive approaches to AI-powered commerce. PayPal collaborated with Perplexity in May 2025 to enable the checkout in the AI search tool. In September, it introduced Google’s Agent Payments Protocol for integration across Google products.
PayPal is also expanding its internal AI capabilities, providing ChatGPT Enterprise access to all 24,000 employees and enabling engineers to utilize OpenAI’s Codex for development.
Alex Chriss, PayPal’s President and CEO, stated that 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. He stated that this partnership brings together two powerful platforms to enhance the shopping experience. “By partnering with OpenAI, PayPal will power commerce experiences that help people go from chat to checkout in just a few taps.”
Implications for the Future of Shopping
PayPal’s acquisitions are a crucial part of the online commerce process. OpenAI aims to compete with Amazon and Google in product discovery. This creates a fascinating environment in which PayPal provides the back end and OpenAI provides the consumer-facing shopping experience.
AI commerce is moving quickly in all directions. Google recently announced its Agent Payments Protocol (AP2) that incorporates embedded stablecoin functionality and received commitments from over sixty partners, including Coinbase, MasterCard, and American Express. Established consumer payments companies will have no choice but to adjust quickly or risk losing their relevance in an AI-first shopping ecosystem.
The other interesting element of this integration is that it will be especially favorable to small and mid-sized businesses. Millions of smaller merchants will be able to leverage the large ChatGPT user base without incurring costs for AI integration or having to add AI themselves. In the end, this process could democratize the playing field between major brands and smaller merchants.
Conclusion
The PayPal-OpenAI partnership is a shift in commerce operations. Conversational commerce allows efficient and intuitive shopping experiences in which the consumer states their needs and the AI performs all research and recommendation fluidly. Although there are questions about the actual adoption rates and overall trust with users, PayPal feels confident in where it stands for this transition. As technology becomes available in 2026, the AI and commerce convergence will accelerate, and traditional e-commerce experiences may appear significantly different within a decade
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