OpenAI and Stripe built instant checkout for ChatGPT... here's how it could reshape online shopping
OpenAI and Stripe launched something that sounds simple but could fundamentally change how online purchase works.
ChatGPT users can now buy products without leaving the chat. Ask for a handmade leather wallet, tap "Buy," confirm your order, done. No browser tabs, no checkout pages, no friction.
Starting with Etsy sellers and rolling out soon to over a million Shopify merchants like Glossier, SKIMS, and Spanx. But the feature itself isn't the story. What matters is the infrastructure powering it: the Agentic Commerce Protocol, which OpenAI open-sourced.
That means any AI assistant, from Claude to Gemini to whatever launches next, can plug into the same system. Conversational shopping isn't an OpenAI exclusive anymore. It's infrastructure spreading across the internet, and it's happening fast.
In This Article...
AI Just Became the New Gatekeeper
For two decades, Google and Amazon controlled how people found things online. Search, see results, choose. Simple. The platforms were middlemen, but passive ones.
AI assistants change that completely. They don't display options, they make recommendations. When someone asks ChatGPT for product suggestions, it doesn't return ten blue links. It surfaces specific products it thinks match what the person wants.
That shift from displaying to recommending changes everything about who controls discovery.
Here's the telling part: brands are already feeding ChatGPT richer product data than what's on their own websites. OpenAI's product lead Michelle Fradin explained why: "The best way today to ensure as a merchant that your product has the best chance of being chosen is to make sure that we have the most up-to-date and richest amount of information about your products as possible."
Businesses are competing for AI attention now, not just human attention. They're investing more effort in positioning for AI recommendations than they put into their own customer-facing content.
If that doesn't signal where this is headed, nothing will.
And because the Agentic Commerce Protocol is open source, this isn't contained to one platform. Every AI assistant can adopt it. The infrastructure layer for AI-driven commerce could be operating across the internet within months, not years.
The Leverage Opportunity Nobody's Talking About
There's a principle worth understanding here: get paid for what you've done, not what you do.
Trading time for money creates an income ceiling. Work, get paid, need another client. That's linear. Creating something once and getting paid repeatedly, that's leverage.
AI-driven discovery creates exactly this kind of leverage opportunity, and most people aren't seeing it.
Look at what's happening with physical products right now. A brand invests time upfront to create rich, structured product data. They feed it to ChatGPT once. Then, every time someone asks a relevant question, the AI surfaces that product. The brand isn't doing anything in that moment. The positioning work was done earlier, but it generates results repeatedly.
That's leverage.
The same dynamic will apply to your business. When prospects start asking AI assistants "best business consultant for scaling to seven figures" or "which executive coach specializes in tech founders," the AI needs to understand your expertise to recommend you.
But here's the problem: AI can't recommend what it doesn't comprehend. And right now, most high-ticket businesses have zero structured information about their expertise in formats AI can parse and understand.
That gap is your opportunity.
Position your expertise correctly today, and you'll get recommended repeatedly tomorrow without lifting a finger. Those who wait will spend years trading time for client acquisition, manually pursuing every lead, while early movers benefit from AI-driven recommendations they set up once.
That's the difference between leverage and linear income, and the window to build that leverage is right now.
AIO Is Not SEO With a Different Name
A new discipline is emerging called AIO, or AI Optimization. Understanding how it differs from SEO matters more than you might think.
SEO was about gaming algorithms. Learn the ranking factors, optimize your pages, build backlinks, compete to appear higher. The rules were relatively fixed, and once you understood the formula, you could apply it systematically.
AIO doesn't work that way at all.
Michelle Fradin explained the distinction: "Unlike traditional search engines, where platforms carefully guard algorithms to prevent low-quality content from gaming the system, ChatGPT's shopping recommendations are entirely AI-driven. There isn't a fixed formula merchants can optimize against."
So if there's no formula to game, what is AIO?
It's about structuring information so AI models can comprehend your value. Not optimizing for keywords. Not building backlinks. Organizing your expertise in ways that help AI understand what you do, who you serve, why someone should choose you, and how your approach differs from alternatives.
That's a completely different skill set.
For service businesses, this creates both challenge and opportunity. The challenge: most marketing copy is written for human persuasion, not AI comprehension. It uses emotional triggers, storytelling, social proof. All effective for humans, but not structured in ways AI can parse systematically.
The opportunity: most competitors haven't figured this out yet. Early positioning creates lasting advantage because you're building comprehension in AI systems while others are still writing traditional marketing copy.
Test this yourself right now. Ask ChatGPT "best business coach for scaling to seven figures." What happens? It might give generic advice. It might recommend well-known personalities. It probably won't mention your business, even if you're legitimately one of the best in that space.
Why? Because the information isn't structured in ways the AI can access and understand.
OpenAI made their direction clear: "As AI becomes a key interface for how people discover, decide, and buy, the Agentic Commerce Protocol provides a foundation that connects people and businesses for the next era of commerce."
The infrastructure is being built now. It will expand beyond physical products. And the businesses positioning themselves correctly during this phase will dominate recommendations in their categories.
Here's how seriously smart operators are taking this: the article reveals businesses are supplying "even more detail than they publish on their own sites, in hopes of improving their chances of being surfaced."
They're investing more effort in AI-readable content than customer-facing marketing. That tells you everything about where the competitive advantage lies.
The Bottom Line
Over 700 million people use ChatGPT weekly. They can now complete purchases without leaving the chat. For physical products, this is already live and operating at scale.
Service businesses are next.
The same infrastructure that lets someone buy a handmade wallet in ChatGPT will eventually let someone book a consulting engagement, schedule a coaching session, or invest in a high-ticket program. The protocol doesn't care whether it's processing a $27 purchase or a $27,000 one.
Most businesses will wait until this becomes obvious. They'll wait until competitors are getting AI-driven referrals. They'll wait until traffic patterns shift. They'll wait until clients mention they found someone else through an AI recommendation.
Then they'll scramble to catch up, restructuring their positioning and investing in documentation while early movers benefit from work they did months earlier.
This pattern repeats with every infrastructure shift. Early SEO adopters dominated for years. Early content creators built audiences that compounded. Businesses that adapted to mobile quickly gained lasting advantages.
The same dynamic is playing out now with AI-driven discovery, except faster. The infrastructure is open source, which means adoption will spread rapidly across platforms. Position yourself correctly now, and you'll own mindshare when prospects ask AI for recommendations.
The question isn't whether AI will mediate how clients find service providers. OpenAI made clear this is just the beginning, and the infrastructure is being built right now.
The question is whether your business will be positioned correctly when it happens.