OpenAI folded up
the checkout counter
It built a buy button, then switched it off six months later.
The fight moved from the checkout to the shelf.
It switched off what it built
In September 2025, OpenAI and Stripe launched Instant Checkout — a way to complete a purchase inside ChatGPT itself. Six months later, in March 2026, OpenAI retired it. Checkout was routed back to merchant screens, and ChatGPT chose to focus on discovery. This wasn't a failure — OpenAI confirmed for itself that what it's good at isn't the buy button, but deciding what to show.
Two companies went the other way
At the same time, Google and Perplexity moved in the opposite direction. At I/O 2026 in May, Google introduced Universal Cart and its payments protocol, AP2. AP2 v0.2.0, shipped in April, supports "Human Not Present" payments — letting an agent buy autonomously within limits set in advance, useful the instant a limited release drops. Perplexity's Instant Buy, built with PayPal, overtook ChatGPT in 2026 to become the most active agentic checkout channel. While OpenAI stepped back from payment, the other two went deeper into it.
- 2025.09 — Google announces the Agent Payments Protocol (AP2), with 60+ partners including PayPal, Mastercard and Amex. The same month, OpenAI and Stripe launch ChatGPT's Instant Checkout.
- 2026.03 — OpenAI retires Instant Checkout, routing payment to merchant apps like Instacart, Target and Booking.com; ChatGPT refocuses on product discovery.
- 2026.04 — AP2 v0.2.0 ships, supporting "Human Not Present" autonomous payments.
- 2026.05 — At Google I/O, Universal Cart launches, spanning Search, Gemini, YouTube and Gmail.
- 2026 — Perplexity's Instant Buy (built with PayPal) becomes the most active agentic checkout channel, overtaking ChatGPT.
- 2025.11–2026 — Amazon sues Perplexity over its Comet shopping browser; a district court grants a preliminary injunction in March 2026; the Ninth Circuit reverses it in August 2026, sending the case back down.
The question courts reversed — who accessed it
Amazon sued Perplexity over its shopping browser, Comet, in November 2025. In March 2026, a district court granted a preliminary injunction blocking Comet from buying on Amazon through a logged-in session. In August 2026, an appeals court reversed it. The reasoning: when a person tasks an agent with buying something on Amazon, it's the person — not the agent — who "accessed" the site. The court found Amazon unlikely to succeed under federal computer-access law. The case was sent back to the district court; it isn't fully settled. But the direction has tilted — toward treating an agent as a person's proxy, not an intruder. Which means the question for a brand isn't whether to block agents. It's which agents to show first, and on what terms.
Where PR has to move
The moment OpenAI dropped payment to focus on discovery, it answered its own question about where the fight is. Not the buy button — the list in front of it. What an agent compares and chooses from isn't ad copy; it's structured facts — price, stock, reviews, specs. If GEO has so far meant "how to get cited in an AI answer," the next stage is "how to make an AI agent's shortlist." An answer wants an explanation. An agent wants evidence.
The customer isn't shifting from person to agent. The agent has become the new first customer, and the person only checks the result at the end. PR gained one more audience.
- GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) — the practice of structuring content so generative AI cites your brand in its answers.
- 2026 Survey: How Korean Brands Handle AI Crawlers — ProudComm's own audit of robots.txt across 50 major Korean brands. The same question — which agent to let in, and how — now applies to shopping agents too.
- Intelligence PR — a PR approach combining real-time AI analysis with human strategic judgment.