The ChatGPT buy button is here: What it means for e-commerce

Well, it finally happened. Just when you thought your late-night shopping habit couldn’t get any more frictionless, OpenAI went and dropped a ChatGPT buy button. Now, millions of people can go from asking for a gift idea to actually buying it, all without ever leaving the chat window.

This new "Instant Checkout" feature is starting with merchants on Etsy and will soon include Shopify, and it’s a massive signal for where online shopping is going. It’s the first major step into what the tech world is calling agentic commerce, a fancy way of saying AI assistants won’t just find things for you, they’ll do things for you.

On one hand, this is a huge new channel. On the other, it means giving up a ton of control over how customers see and interact with your brand.

So, let’s get into it. We’ll break down what the ChatGPT buy button actually is, what this whole "agentic commerce" thing means for you, and explore the hidden downsides for merchants. Most importantly, we’ll show you how to build your own on-brand conversational shopping experience, so you can own the customer relationship yourself.

What is the ChatGPT buy button?

First things first, the ChatGPT buy button isn’t one single button that appears everywhere. It’s really just the catchy nickname for a feature OpenAI officially calls "Instant Checkout." Announced by OpenAI, the whole idea is to let people buy stuff directly inside the chat, so they don’t have to click away to some other website and break the flow of the conversation.

It’s a surprisingly smooth experience, powered by a new open standard called the Agentic Commerce Protocol, which was built with help from the payment giant Stripe.

Imagine a user types, "find me a handmade leather wallet under $50." ChatGPT will go out and find a few options. If one of those options is from a store on Etsy, a "Buy" button will pop up right there in the chat.

How does instant checkout work?

The process is designed to be ridiculously easy for the shopper. Here’s a quick look at how it plays out:

1. A user asks ChatGPT for product ideas, just like they’d ask a friend.

2. ChatGPT shows them a few options. If they click on a product that’s part of the program, they’ll see the "Buy" button.

3. They click "Buy" right inside the chat.

4. A secure little checkout window from Stripe pops up within the chat interface. They confirm their shipping and payment info.

5. And that’s it. The purchase is done.

From there, the order gets sent to the merchant’s system, and they handle fulfillment just like any other sale. OpenAI is basically the middleman, passing information back and forth. While that’s super convenient for the customer, it puts the two most important parts of the sale, discovery and checkout, on a platform that isn’t yours.

The ChatGPT buy button and the rise of agentic commerce: A new era for online shopping

This new buy button is more than just a neat feature. It’s a huge push into the world of agentic commerce. The basic idea is that, in the near future, we’ll all have AI agents that act on our behalf. Instead of you spending an hour with 20 tabs open comparing hiking boots, you’ll just tell your AI, "Find me the best waterproof hiking boots for a trip to Colorado, size 10, under $200," and it will handle the research, comparison, and maybe even the purchase.

As OpenAI put it in their announcement, "ChatGPT doesn’t just help you find what to buy, it also helps you buy it." This is a big change from how we shop now. We’re moving away from search-based discovery (typing keywords into Google) and toward conversation-based transactions. The goal is to make the journey from "I want something" to "It’s on its way" as short and painless as possible.

This whole new system is being built on an open standard called the Agentic Commerce Protocol (ACP). Think of the ACP as a shared language that lets AI agents and online stores talk to each other securely to make a sale happen. It’s designed to work with any AI and any payment processor, which is great in theory.

This video from OpenAI introduces the Instant Checkout feature, showing how the ChatGPT buy button is the first step toward agentic commerce.

But it also means that the customer’s shopping experience is increasingly happening inside these big AI platforms. And for any business owner, that should raise a really important question: how do you stand out when your product is just one more result in a generic chat window?

The challenge for merchants: What you lose with the ChatGPT buy button

Getting your products in front of the hundreds of millions of people who use ChatGPT every week is a tempting offer. No one can deny that. But that access comes with some serious strings attached, and it’s not just about the transaction fee OpenAI will charge. Relying on a third-party platform for sales means giving up control over the things that make your business unique.

Your brand and customer experience get lost

When someone buys your product through ChatGPT, their experience is with OpenAI, not with you. All the effort you put into designing your website, your branding, and your customer journey gets replaced by a standard, one-size-fits-all chat interface.

You lose the chance to:

• Show off your brand’s personality. Your unique design, your witty copy, your beautiful product photos, they all disappear.

• Guide the customer’s journey. You can’t strategically place new arrivals, highlight a sale, or use your homepage to tell a story.

• Create upsell and cross-sell opportunities. The current version of Instant Checkout is for single-item purchases. That means no "you might also like" suggestions or tempting add-ons at checkout, which can be a huge source of revenue.

You become dependent on the "black box" algorithm

How does ChatGPT decide which products to recommend? OpenAI says the results are "ranked purely on relevance to the user," considering things like price and availability. But beyond that, the algorithm is a complete mystery.

This is a huge risk, especially if you’ve spent years figuring out SEO and digital marketing to get traffic to your site. With this model, you have almost no direct say in how or when your products show up. Building a predictable sales funnel becomes incredibly difficult when you’re at the mercy of an algorithm you can’t see or influence.

You’re stuck with limited integrations

Right now, the ChatGPT buy button is only for a few big platforms. But what if your store is on BigCommerce? What if you need your AI to do more than just sell a product?

Maybe you want it to check a customer’s loyalty points, look up their warranty status, or schedule a service appointment. These are the kinds of custom interactions that build real customer loyalty, and they require deep integrations with your internal systems. In a closed ecosystem like ChatGPT’s, that kind of tailored experience is pretty much off the table.

Beyond the ChatGPT buy button: Owning your conversational commerce strategy

The hype around the ChatGPT buy button proves one thing loud and clear: customers are ready to shop by having a conversation. The good news is, you don’t have to give your brand away to a tech giant to meet that demand. By putting an AI chatbot on your own website, you can offer the same convenience while keeping total control.

Why an on-site AI chatbot beats the ChatGPT buy button for e-commerce

Think of an AI chatbot built for your brand as your best salesperson and support agent, working 24/7. It lives on your website, speaks in your brand’s voice, and knows your products and policies inside and out.

This approach lets you:

• Own the entire conversation. You keep customers on your site, where you control the branding, the messaging, and the entire user journey.

• Give expert product advice. You can train the AI on your whole product catalog, including all the little details that help it guide a shopper to the perfect item for them.

• Connect to your own tools. You can link your chatbot to your inventory system, order management software, and help desk to give customers real-time, personalized answers.

How eesel AI puts you in control

Instead of getting lost in a generic platform, you can build a custom conversational experience with a tool like eesel AI. It’s designed to give you full control, and you can set it up yourself without needing a team of developers.

Here’s how eesel helps you build a better AI shopping assistant:

• Deep e-commerce integration: eesel AI connects right to your Shopify store, so it can learn your entire product catalog and answer detailed questions about sizes, materials, and stock levels.

• Unify all your knowledge: Don’t stop at the product catalog. You can train your chatbot on your help center articles, FAQs, past support tickets, and even internal Google Docs. This ensures it has an answer for almost any question a customer could throw at it.

• Total customization: Use eesel’s powerful prompt editor to dial in your AI’s exact tone of voice and personality. Even better, you can create custom "actions" that let the chatbot do things like look up an order status or check inventory levels by pinging your internal APIs.

• Get it live in minutes: You can connect your knowledge sources and have a powerful AI chatbot running on your site in just a few clicks. No need to sit through a sales call or a mandatory demo.

With eesel AI, you get all the benefits of conversational shopping without having to sacrifice the brand identity and customer relationships you’ve worked so hard to build.

Pricing: Comparing platform fees and AI solutions

Let’s talk about the costs. When you sell through a marketplace, the fees can be a real killer. For example, Etsy charges a 6.5% transaction fee on top of other fees. Shopify’s plans also come with their own transaction fees. And on top of all that, OpenAI is adding its own "small fee" for every sale made through Instant Checkout. They haven’t been clear about how much that fee is, which makes it tough to figure out your actual costs.

In contrast, a tool like eesel AI offers straightforward, predictable pricing. Instead of taking a cut of every sale (which punishes you for growing), eesel’s plans are based on usage tiers with no hidden fees.

Plan	Monthly (bill monthly)	AI Interactions/mo	Key Features
Team	$299	Up to 1,000	Train on website/docs, Slack integration, reporting.
Business	$799	Up to 3,000	Train on past tickets, custom AI Actions, API calls.
Custom	Contact Sales	Unlimited	Advanced integrations, custom workflows, dedicated support.

This model means your costs stay predictable, so you can scale up your AI strategy without getting hit with surprise bills.

The future is conversational, and it should be yours

The ChatGPT buy button is a big deal. It’s a clear sign that AI-driven, conversational shopping isn’t some far-off idea anymore, it’s happening right now, and customers are ready for it. This new channel is an interesting way to reach a huge audience, for sure.

But if you’re serious about building a lasting brand and having a direct relationship with your customers, relying only on third-party platforms is a risky move. The real opportunity here is to take the power of conversational AI and use it on your own terms.

By putting a smart AI chatbot on your own website, you can give customers the seamless, interactive experience they want while keeping full control over your brand, your data, and your destiny. The future of commerce is conversational, and the brands that win will be the ones who own that conversation.

Ready to build an AI shopping assistant that works for your brand, not for someone else’s? Get started with eesel AI for free and you can have a custom chatbot live on your site in minutes.