In autumn 2025 buying through an AI assistant stopped being a concept. On September 16 Google introduced AP2, the Agent Payments Protocol, and on September 29 OpenAI and Stripe launched Instant Checkout in ChatGPT together with the open Agentic Commerce Protocol (ACP). A user types “find a gift for my mum under $50”, and ChatGPT picks a product and completes the purchase right in the chat.
How it works
- The AI agent searches and compares products using merchants’ structured data.
- The protocol (ACP or AP2) defines how the agent passes an order and payment details to the store on the user’s behalf and with their confirmation.
- The store stays the merchant of record: it takes the order into its own system and handles payment, delivery and returns.
The start was careful: Instant Checkout launched in the US only, first for Etsy sellers, with Shopify merchants next in line, and for single-item purchases. The direction is clear, though: major payment providers and platforms are connecting to agents.
What it means for a store
In agentic commerce your storefront is “seen” by a model rather than a person. It won’t admire a nice banner, but it will immediately notice incomplete specs, stale stock levels and unclear delivery terms.
How to prepare now
- Product data. Complete attributes, clear names and Schema.org Product/Offer markup on every product page.
- Fresh feeds. Price, stock and delivery times update frequently, not once a day.
- APIs. Catalog, cart and orders are available through an API, not only as HTML pages. Magento and Symfony can do this without rewriting the store.
- Policies. Delivery, returns and warranty are described clearly and in machine-readable form.
- Payments. A provider that already supports agent protocols makes the connection easier.
All of this pays off even without AI agents: better SEO, cleaner marketplace feeds, simpler integrations. Tell us about your store and we will suggest where to start.
