ChatGPT users research products but won't buy there, forcing OpenAI to rethink its commerce strategy

OpenAI is pulling back from processing purchases directly inside ChatGPT. App partners will handle transactions instead, a shift that cuts into OpenAI's potential revenue.

Instead of letting users buy products straight through the chatbot, purchases will now go through apps integrated into ChatGPT, an OpenAI spokesperson confirmed. OpenAI first announced the checkout feature in September 2025 with partners like Shopify, Etsy, and Stripe.

But according to The Information, hardly any merchants actually signed up. Shopify President Harley Finkelstein told an investor conference that only about a dozen of Shopify's millions of merchants currently sell through AI tools, pointing out that the holdup is on the AI companies' side. People do research products in ChatGPT, but they don't follow through with purchases there, according to a source familiar with the situation.

Making matters worse, integrating checkout was a hands-on process: OpenAI had to onboard each active retailer individually. As of February, OpenAI still hadn't built systems to collect and remit state sales taxes, The Information reports.

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Going forward, purchases will flow through apps from partners like Instacart, Target, Expedia, and Booking.com. Since December, Instacart has let ChatGPT users link their existing accounts and pay through them. OpenAI and Stripe say they'll keep developing the Agentic Commerce Protocol, which will support app-based purchases as well.

One interesting wrinkle: Amazon recently took a $15 billion stake in OpenAI with an option to invest up to $50 billion. The retail giant likely has its own reasons for getting involved, steering ChatGPT users toward purchases on its own platform. Until now, Amazon had blocked AI apps like ChatGPT from tapping into its product data.

More broadly, this looks like another setback on OpenAI's path to profitability. The company continues to spend far more than it brings in and badly needs new income streams beyond subscriptions. It had been banking on sales commissions from direct checkout, and now some, if not all, of that money goes to app partners instead. Only about five percent of ChatGPT users actually pay, which means the rest will probably start seeing more ads. But if Perplexity's experience is anything to go by, ads in chatbots might not be a reliable revenue source either.

Adding to OpenAI's troubles, Anthropic is making serious inroads in the enterprise market and is likely much closer to turning a profit than Altman's company. With an IPO in the works, the pressure to close that gap is only going to grow.