PayPal to Work With ChatGPT to Expand Services

PayPal has signed a deal with OpenAI to have its digital wallet embedded into ChatGPT so users can pay for items found through the leading consumer AI tool, the company told CNBC exclusively.

In a major news update on cnb.com, shares of the company jumped as much as 13% on the news.

The agreement, sealed over the weekend, means that starting next year, both sides of PayPal’s ecosystem can plug into ChatGPT: PayPal users can purchase items through the AI platform, and its merchants can sell on it, with their inventory listed there, according to PayPal CEO Alex Chriss.

“We’ve got hundreds of millions of loyal PayPal wallet holders who now will be able to click the ‘Buy with PayPal button’ on ChatGPT and have a safe and secure checkout experience,” Chriss said in an interview.

The move makes PayPal an early part of OpenAI’s efforts to broaden ChatGPT’s use for e-commerce. The thinking is that its 700 million-plus weekly users can lean on artificial intelligence to help them find items, similar to a human personal shopper.

Last month, OpenAI said its users could buy from Shopify and Etsy merchants, and two weeks ago it announced an e-commerce deal with Walmart

“It’s a whole new paradigm for shopping,” Chriss said. “It’s hard to imagine that agentic commerce isn’t going to be a big part of the future.”

PayPal is attempting to position itself as a payments backbone for the coming era of agentic AI shopping, announcing recent deals with Google