OpenAI has confirmed that it is retreating from Instant Checkout, just months after its official launch last October.
In a statement accompanying new updates to ChatGPT designed to improve the buying and selling experience, the company said: “We’ve found that the initial version of Instant Checkout did not offer the level of flexibility that we aspire to provide, so we’re allowing merchants to use their own checkout experiences while we focus our efforts on product discovery.”
Instant Checkout received a lukewarm reception from consumers, and CBNC reports that OpenAI struggled to onboard merchants, show accurate data about products and introduce multi-item carts or connect loyalty memberships.
What OpenAI is doing instead
With 64% of consumers now using AI tools for product research rather than completing transactions, according to eMarketer, OpenAI is repositioning ChatGPT primarily as a product discovery tool. Retailers will continue to manage their own checkout processes, but OpenAI is encouraging them to build dedicated apps inside ChatGPT for deeper integration.
OpenAI has also announced that it is “extending ACP to be the connective layer between merchants and users throughout discovery” which it says will “serve as a foundation for broader AI-native commerce experiences, including personalisation, local availability, and ETAs.”
OpenAI versus Meta and Google
As pointed out by Martin Peers in The Information, OpenAI’s announcement landed just hours before Meta unveiled its own shopping-related tools, including a “new AI experience” designed to give people more information about products before they buy them. Google, too, has recently updated its shopping agent platform with features that include real-time product data to reduce out-of-stock issues and pricing errors.
Peers also notes that OpenAI’s pivot leaves investors such as PayPal, which had been working on integrating its digital wallet directly into ChatGPT, “in limbo.”
OpenAI’s U-turn makes it clear that the future of AI-driven commerce is still far from settled. For retailers, the message is unmistakeable: chasing every new AI experiment is not a recipe for success. Instead, the focus needs to be on building flexible, future-proof strategies that can adapt as the agentic commerce landscape continues to shift.