Officially entering the e-commerce sector, PayPal becomes ChatGPT's first payment wallet

PayPal and OpenAI have announced a strategic partnership, with ChatGPT integrating a full-featured payment wallet for the first time, enabling users to complete purchases directly within conversations.

Written by: Zhang Yaqi

Source: Wallstreetcn

PayPal and OpenAI have reached a milestone cooperation, embedding its digital wallet into ChatGPT, marking the payment giant’s official entry into the new field of AI-driven e-commerce.

According to a joint statement released by both parties, starting next year, ChatGPT, with hundreds of millions of users, will integrate a complete payment wallet for the first time. When users search for and discover products through this leading generative AI tool, PayPal will provide the underlying payment technology to help them directly convert search intent into actual purchases.

This news has greatly boosted investor confidence, causing PayPal’s share price to surge by as much as 14% in pre-market US trading, reversing nearly an 18% decline so far this year.

If the rally continues, this will be the largest intraday gain on record since the stock began trading in July 2015.

This partnership is a key step for OpenAI’s expansion into the e-commerce sector. Previously, the AI giant had announced collaborations with Shopify, Etsy, and Walmart, allowing its users to discover products from these platforms via ChatGPT. In addition to becoming the first payment partner, PayPal will also leverage OpenAI’s enterprise-level AI products to accelerate its internal product development cycles.

Emphasizing Security and Convenience, Building a Two-way Trust Network

According to the agreement, PayPal will not just provide a payment button. The company will support transactions within ChatGPT with comprehensive backend infrastructure by adopting the Agentic Commerce Protocol (ACP). This means PayPal will handle merchant routing, payment verification, and global transaction coordination, so merchants do not need to integrate separately with OpenAI.

PayPal CEO Alex Chriss emphasized that PayPal’s advantage lies in its vast network of verified users and merchants. He stated:

This is not just about enabling transactions; more importantly, it is the combination of the world’s largest trusted merchant network, verified by PayPal, with the world’s largest verified consumer wallet.

When users shop within ChatGPT, they can choose to pay using bank accounts, credit cards, or balances linked to their PayPal wallet. At the same time, they will enjoy a series of post-purchase services provided by PayPal, such as buyer and seller protection, package tracking, and dispute resolution, ensuring the security and reliability of transactions.

Additionally, as part of the partnership, PayPal will also more broadly apply OpenAI’s technology internally. The company will deploy ChatGPT Enterprise for its 24,000 employees and integrate the Codex tool for engineers to accelerate product development cycles and improve customer experience.

AI Opens a New Shopping Paradigm, PayPal Seizes the Payment Gateway

This cooperation is seen as the beginning of a new shopping model driven by agentic AI. In this model, AI acts much like a human personal shopping assistant. According to the official statement, among OpenAI’s more than 700 million weekly users, hundreds of millions already use ChatGPT to search for products.

Starting from 2026, PayPal will bring product information from millions of small and medium-sized businesses and global brands on its platform—covering categories such as apparel, beauty, and electronics—into ChatGPT, enabling users to discover and purchase directly within conversations. Alex Chriss stated:

It’s hard to imagine agentic commerce not becoming an important part of the future.

For PayPal, this deal is part of its broader AI strategy. Recently, the company also announced similar partnerships with Google and another AI company, Perplexity, aiming to secure a favorable position as AI technology reshapes the business landscape.

Performance Exceeds Expectations, AI Boosts, Stock Price Reverses Downtrend

Alongside the major positive news of its partnership with OpenAI, PayPal also released strong third-quarter financial results and an optimistic full-year outlook, providing solid fundamentals to support the stock’s surge.

The financial report shows that PayPal raised its full-year adjusted earnings per share forecast to $5.35–$5.39, higher than the previous estimate and the market’s expectation of $5.25. The company’s third-quarter net revenue reached $8.42 billion, adjusted earnings per share were $1.34, and adjusted free cash flow was $2.3 billion, all exceeding market expectations.

However, the report also revealed growth challenges facing the company. Third-quarter payment transaction volume fell 4.5% year-on-year to 6.33 billion transactions, below market expectations. The number of active user accounts grew 1.4% year-on-year to 440 million, with growth slowing. Against this backdrop, the partnership with OpenAI is seen as a key strategic move for PayPal to break through growth bottlenecks and inject new vitality into its core payment business.