On September 29, 2025, OpenAI and Shopify announced a partnership to help Shopify sellers develop a new revenue channel: Agentic AI through ChatGPT. This integration has the potential to increase participating retailers’ revenue and introduce their brand to new customers through conversational commerce. In this post, you’ll learn how it works and what you can do to make the most of it.
How the Agentic Shopping Process Works for a Consumer
As of this writing, the technological integration with Shopify is still in progress, but it’s coming soon. To see how this integration works, we can look at the fully rolled-out example of Etsy:
While shopping for gifts for a young man who joined the Marines a few months ago, I asked ChatGPT for ideas that would be thoughtful, age-appropriate, and budget-friendly. The chatbot provided a list of ideas, its rationale, and links to the sellers’ websites in case I was ready to make a purchase.
Clicking on an underlined phrase triggers a picture of the product in the right side of the screen and a list of sellers. In the screenshot above, you can see that the options for purchase include a button that says, “Visit.” Clicking would open a tab and bring you to the seller’s product page, where you could make a purchase on its site.
When the product is available on Etsy, the option to “Buy” is available in ChatGPT, and it’s called “Instant Checkout.”
Clicking “Buy” triggers the agentic AI shopping process, opening a pop-up window with the item’s price and payment method options. In this case, Etsy’s options include Google Pay and a credit card payment. The buyer can complete the purchase without leaving ChatGPT, but the seller remains the merchant of record, is responsible for the post-purchase process, and retains the customer’s necessary information.
Currently, the customer must review and approve each step of the process (shipping address, subtotal, etc.), and only one item can be purchased at a time. In the future, multiple products may be purchased within ChatGPT and agentic AI may transition to only needing approval during the final step of the purchase process.
How the Shopify ChatGPT Integration Works for the Seller
If your ecommerce website is built with Shopify, you do not need to do anything to be considered for agentic shopping; you’re already included in the program. When the integration goes live, Shopify sellers will be added on a rolling basis.
The system uses Agentic Commerce Protocol (ACP), which is an “open standard that enables AI agents and businesses to transact seamlessly,” providing the foundation for how AI chatbots, like ChatGPT, handle shopping. ACP is scalable and flexible, so as selling through ChatGPT advances, the system will evolve with it.
If your payment processor is Stripe, you can enable payments with just one line of code. If not, you can connect through Stripe’s Shared Payment Token API or the ACP Delegated Payments Spec without changing your current system.
How to Make the Most of the ChatGPT/Shopify Opportunity
ChatGPT claims that participation in Instant Checkout does not influence when and how you show up when users ask for shopping recommendations; however, it does appear to be a factor:
When ranking multiple merchants that sell the same product, ChatGPT considers factors like availability, price, quality, whether a merchant is the primary seller, and whether Instant Checkout is enabled, to optimize the user experience.
To help ensure your product pages are considered by ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and other chatbots, whether using agentic AI or just having a conversation, it’s important to implement good search engine optimization (SEO) and generative engine optimization (GEO) practices:
- Ensure your website is technically sound, secure, and indexable.
- Optimize your images with helpful alt text.
- Answer any potential buyer questions on the product page.
- Highlight user-generated content and product reviews.
- Use product schema as appropriate.
If you have questions about the Shopify ChatGPT integration, GEO, or SEO, reach out to our experienced team. We’re happy to discuss how to ensure your brand is visible to Google, Bing, ChatGPT, and more.
