Shop Till Your AI Agent Drops: New Front in the 'Button Wars' --- OpenAI launches 'agentic' commerce era on Etsy

“Artificial intelligence is going shopping. What does that mean for the people who work the checkout counter?

 

OpenAI said this week that it was adding a payment feature to ChatGPT, to start enabling users to essentially deputize the chatbot to do their shopping. Not only can ChatGPT help you figure out what you want, and where to get it, you'll be able to tell it to make the purchase for you, too.

 

This is what is known as "agentic" commerce.

 

 Many shoppers might see this as a terrific convenience, taking away the hassle of navigating a retailer's website or app and dealing with its carts and checkout screen.

 

But investors know the checkout counter is prime real estate for many companies in the payments business. Having your brand be the one users opt to click on to pay -- whether it be Apple, PayPal, Shopify, Cash App, Affirm, Klarna or more -- has been the subject of such fierce competition that analysts dubbed it "the button wars."

 

And retailers themselves, whose margins are always being squeezed, work hard to find ways to turn payments to their advantage. They offer their own cards. They store users' money in accounts. The big ones drive hard bargains with payment providers to squeeze an extra few cents out of each click.

 

What happens to all those players if it's not a consumer -- subject to the whims of convenience, loyalty or familiarity -- but a calculating chatbot deciding where to shop and how to pay?

 

There will be many, many ways to answer that question. Chatbots can still ask, how would you like to pay? Retailers that move early might be able to figure out how to be AI's top recommendation, boosting their sales.

 

Or, retailers might find it harder to stand out other than on something commoditized, like price. Chatbot providers can cut their own deals for payments, turning them into the new kingmakers.

 

They could also prove their worth to shoppers by instantly figuring out how to wring maximum value from each transaction, with someone else footing the bill. Use this card for the rewards points when you buy this, use that digital wallet to get free shipping when you buy that.

 

For now, chatbots may be directing only a trickle of shoppers. OpenAI said that in the U.S., ChatGPT users could now buy from U.S. Etsy sellers. Morgan Stanley analysts estimated that referrals from ChatGPT generated less than 0.3% of Etsy's U.S. web traffic in August. Though that is growing fast, rising about sixfold in the past year, it's small stuff.

 

Etsy's shares saw things differently: They were up more than 15% on Monday and down almost 11% on Tuesday. Morgan Stanley's analysts saw near-term upside, and said they were encouraged by the "proactive" move. But they also wrote: "Long-term, is agentic shopping a friend or foe?"

 

As with so much else about AI these days, it's tough to tell. But payments companies may soon be a test case for a real-world, and real-money, application of the technology.” [1]

 

1. EXCHANGE --- Heard on the Street: Shop Till Your AI Agent Drops: New Front in the 'Button Wars' --- OpenAI launches 'agentic' commerce era on Etsy. Demos, Telis.  Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y.. 04 Oct 2025: B12.