Alex Chriss, CEO, PayPal
Courtesy: PayPal
PayPal The company revealed exclusively to CNBC that it has signed an agreement with OpenAI to embed its digital wallet into ChatGPT so that users can pay for items found through the leading consumer artificial intelligence tool.
PayPal CEO Alex Chriss said the agreement, signed over the weekend, means that starting next year, both sides of the PayPal ecosystem will be able to access ChatGPT: PayPal users can buy goods through the artificial intelligence platform, and merchants can sell goods on the platform and list inventory.
“We have hundreds of millions of loyal PayPal wallet holders who can now click the 'Buy with PayPal button' on ChatGPT and get a safe and secure checkout experience,” Chris said in an interview.
The move makes PayPal part of OpenAI's early efforts to expand ChatGPT's use in e-commerce. The idea is that the more than 700 million weekly users can rely on AI to help them find items, just like a human personal shopper. Last month, OpenAI said its users could start from Shopping and etsi Two weeks ago, it announced e-commerce deals with merchants Walmart.
“It’s a whole new model of shopping,” Chris said. “It’s hard to imagine agency commerce not being a big part of the future.”
PayPal is trying to position itself as the payments mainstay in the coming era of agent-powered AI shopping, announcing a recent partnership with Google and artificial intelligence company Perplexity. The fintech company issued a press release on its OpenAI deal on Tuesday.
The company will also manage merchant routing, payment verification and other behind-the-scenes aspects of payment processing for PayPal sellers on ChatGPT, so individual merchants don't need to sign up for OpenAI, the company said.
Chris touts that both consumers and merchants are verified by fintech companies, reducing the risk of fraud for either group. Users can withdraw funds from a linked bank account or credit card or stored balance to pay for purchases, and they will receive protection, package tracking and dispute resolution.
“It’s not just one deal that can happen,” Chris said. “This is a trusted group of merchants, PayPal’s largest global merchant network, with the largest number of verified consumers in their wallets.”
PayPal also said it is expanding the use of OpenAI enterprise artificial intelligence products for employees to speed up product cycles.