PayPal has signed a deal with OpenAI to embed its digital wallet directly into ChatGPT, allowing users to buy and sell items through the artificial intelligence platform — a move that sent the company’s stock more than 9% Tuesday after rising as much as 13% in premarket trading.
PayPal confirmed the partnership in an Oct. 28 press release, calling it a major step in expanding “agentic commerce” through the company’s global merchant network and connecting tens of millions of small businesses to ChatGPT. The partnership positions PayPal at the center of OpenAI’s push into e-commerce, as artificial intelligence begins reshaping how consumers discover and purchase products online. Analysts say the move could open a new revenue stream for PayPal while helping OpenAI monetize its rapidly growing user base.
The integration, finalized over the weekend, will launch next year, PayPal CEO Alex Chriss told CNBC. Both PayPal buyers and merchants will be able to complete transactions inside ChatGPT, which now has more than 700 million weekly users.
“We’ve got hundreds of millions of loyal PayPal wallet holders who now will be able to click the ‘Buy with PayPal’ button on ChatGPT and have a safe and secure checkout experience,” Chriss said.
The partnership makes PayPal the first payments wallet to join ChatGPT’s new e-commerce framework, known as the Agentic Commerce Protocol, co-developed by OpenAI and Stripe. The system allows AI agents to communicate directly with merchants to complete purchases.
The update follows OpenAI’s rollout of its Instant Checkout feature, which already enables U.S. users to purchase products from Etsy and will soon expand to more than one million Shopify merchants and Walmart listings. OpenAI has described this as the first step toward “agentic commerce,” where artificial intelligence acts as a personal shopping assistant that can handle discovery and payment.
The collaboration mirrors a growing trend among tech and retail giants integrating conversational AI into shopping. Walmart, Shopify, and Stripe have all struck deals with OpenAI in recent months to embed payment and discovery tools within ChatGPT’s chat interface.
Chriss said PayPal will handle merchant routing, payment validation, and verification behind the scenes while maintaining the company’s standard buyer protections — including fraud prevention, dispute resolution, and package tracking.
“It’s not just that a transaction can happen,” Chriss said. “It’s that this is a trusted set of merchants, the largest merchant network in the world from PayPal, verified with the largest set of verified consumers in a digital wallet.”
In its official announcement, PayPal said it will also adopt OpenAI’s enterprise tools for its 24,000-plus employees to accelerate product development and expand ChatGPT Enterprise access across the company.