ChatGPT Instant Checkout and Agentic Commerce
On September 29, 2025, OpenAI announced Instant Checkout: buying products in ChatGPT without leaving the chat, built on the Agentic Commerce Protocol (ACP), which it developed with Stripe. Since March 2026, Instant Checkout no longer exists as a standalone feature. The protocol lives on and does a different job. Here is where things stand on October 6, 2026.
In short
Instant Checkout, paying inside ChatGPT, has been gone as a standalone feature since March 2026. Shoppers now discover products in ChatGPT and pay on the store's own site. Shopping in ChatGPT is not live for Dutch online stores yet: OpenAI says it only runs in the United States. You can still prepare with accurate product data, a correct feed and an accessible site.
What is agentic commerce?
Agentic commerce is shopping where an AI assistant searches, compares and sometimes orders on the buyer's behalf. The assistant reads product details from feeds and product pages. A product feed is a file or connection holding your catalog, including price, stock, delivery time and shipping costs. The Agentic Commerce Protocol (ACP) and the Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP) are agreements on how a store passes that data, and its checkout process, to such an assistant. For an online store, that makes your product data as important as your product pages.
What happened to Instant Checkout
At launch, Instant Checkout only worked for US users buying from US Etsy sellers. The Netherlands and the rest of Europe were left out.
Shopify and Etsy signed up, as did Walmart, but the range stayed small. Forrester analyst Emily Pfeiffer said about 30 Shopify stores could sell through Instant Checkout in February 2026. Walmart put around 200,000 products in ChatGPT and saw conversion run three times lower than for customers sent to its own site. Etsy reported low purchase volume. Pfeiffer added that data on stock, delivery time and shipping costs was not always correct. All of this comes from a CNBC article of March 20, 2026.
On March 24, 2026, OpenAI said the first version of Instant Checkout offered too little flexibility. Stores can now use their own checkout, while OpenAI concentrates on product discovery. The page for merchants (as of October 3, 2026) says shoppers discover and compare products in ChatGPT and complete the purchase on the store's site or in its app. OpenAI charges no fees on purchases that start in ChatGPT.
Stores that want more control can build their own app inside ChatGPT. Walmart did so on March 24, 2026, and Etsy followed in May 2026 with an app in beta. OpenAI itself says most stores start with a product feed and that an app mainly suits larger retailers.
On October 28, 2025, PayPal announced that ChatGPT users would be able to pay with PayPal and that the catalogs of PayPal merchants would arrive in ChatGPT in 2026. We could not find any sign that this has launched.
The protocol
ACP still exists. On March 24, 2026, OpenAI widened it from checkout to product discovery: stores share product feeds and actions, also through providers such as Salesforce and Stripe, so their range can be found in ChatGPT. The latest released version of the specification dates from April 17, 2026. It adds carts, a feed API, orders and authentication, among other things. The protocol is on GitHub as a beta, maintained by OpenAI and Stripe.
It is not the only standard. Google developed the Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP) with Shopify, Etsy, Wayfair, Target and Walmart, among others, and announced it on January 11, 2026. According to ucp.dev, Amazon and Microsoft also contribute, as do Meta, Salesforce and Stripe. For sellers, Stripe supports both protocols in one integration.
Availability in the Netherlands
According to OpenAI (as of October 3, 2026), shopping in ChatGPT is live only in the United States. OpenAI wants to expand to more regions but gives no date. Store feeds are currently taken in through approved partners, and anyone who signs up lands on a waitlist. OpenAI plans to deliver a self-service portal for stores before the end of 2026.
OpenAI says the Shopify and Etsy catalogs are already in ChatGPT without stores having to do anything. On Shopify, only US shoppers can buy through the AI channels, Shopify reported on June 18, 2026. According to its documentation, the Stripe Agentic Commerce Suite is available in the Netherlands. You upload your product catalog there and request a connection per AI agent. That does not mean such an agent already shows your products to Dutch shoppers.
Ads in ChatGPT, on the other hand, are open in the Netherlands. OpenAI opened ChatGPT Ads in 31 European countries, the Netherlands among them, at the end of August 2026. The ads only appear for users on a Free or Go plan, and since August 31, 2026 you can place your own through Ads Manager.
What other players are doing
Through UCP, Google offers checkout in AI Mode and the Gemini app for selected US stores. On May 20, 2026, Google announced a Universal Cart, which lets shoppers pay at several stores with Google Pay. The same announcement says UCP checkout is coming to Canada and Australia, and later to the United Kingdom. The Netherlands is not mentioned.
Microsoft announced Copilot Checkout on January 8, 2026, with PayPal and Shopify as payment partners, plus Stripe. According to Shopify, Microsoft only shows that checkout to customers in the United States. Amazon built its own assistant, Alexa for Shopping, which has been available to US customers since the announcement of May 13, 2026. With Buy for Me it can also order from other stores.
In the Netherlands, bol (the country's largest online marketplace) launched Shophulp, called Shopper Agent in English, in beta on September 15, 2026. It is an assistant next to the search bar. Partners do not need to change anything, because the assistant uses existing product information.
What it delivers so far
People mostly use AI to search and compare, and rarely pay in it. In a Semrush survey of just over 1,000 Americans, 22 percent had bought a product in an AI tool, while half had made a purchase after researching with AI (cited by CNBC in March 2026). On May 12, 2026, Q&A Retail reported that half of Dutch consumers use generative AI while shopping. Of those, 20 percent start researching a purchase in an AI tool and 26 percent start on Google. For Google that figure used to be 36 percent.
What you can do now
Checkout happens on your own site. What you can influence is whether AI systems find your products and read them correctly.
- Take your ten most important products and compare the data in your feed with the product page. Price, stock, shipping costs, delivery time and return terms must match everywhere. Stripe's documentation says price mismatches make checkouts fail and that updating stock and price every 15 minutes is enough in most cases.
- Make sure your Google Merchant Center feed is correct and that your product pages carry Product markup. According to Google, AI Overviews and AI Mode need no separate schema.org markup or AI file, and current Merchant Center data is part of the basics. As of mid-September 2026, product blocks between the regular search results have almost entirely disappeared in the European Economic Area because of the Digital Markets Act. Free listings can still appear elsewhere on Google, and you still need Merchant Center for Shopping and ads.
- Allow OAI-SearchBot in your robots.txt. That crawler decides whether your site can appear in ChatGPT's search features. GPTBot is a different bot, used to train models. According to OpenAI, a change takes about 24 hours to take effect.
- Write product information so it answers questions: what the product suits, which sizes and variants exist, and what its main features are. In Merchant Center you can use the optional conversational attributes in every country, such as up to 30 question-and-answer pairs per product.
- On Shopify, your catalog is in Shopify Catalog by default and you do not need to set anything up. On Stripe, you can upload a catalog through the Agentic Commerce Suite. WooCommerce says agentic checkout for Stripe for WooCommerce is still coming, with no date.
- If you want OpenAI to receive your feed directly, sign up through the form for merchants. A visible result in the Netherlands depends on the expansion beyond the US, for which OpenAI has not named a date.
Who does what, and what does it mean for the Netherlands?
The table sets the developments in this article side by side, as of October 6, 2026.
| Provider | What it is | Available to Dutch shoppers? |
|---|---|---|
| OpenAI (ChatGPT) | Product discovery through feeds, checkout on the store's own site | No, live only in the United States. Ads in ChatGPT are open. |
| Google (UCP) | Checkout in AI Mode and the Gemini app for selected stores | No, in the US. Canada, Australia and later the United Kingdom are announced. |
| Microsoft (Copilot Checkout) | Checkout in Copilot, paid through PayPal or Shopify (Stripe also partners) | No, only for US customers according to Shopify. |
| Amazon (Alexa for Shopping) | Own assistant, with Buy for Me also at other stores | Available to US customers. |
| bol (Shophulp) | Assistant next to the search bar, in beta | Yes, since September 15, 2026. |
Which product data do AI systems read?
An AI assistant compares products on the data it can find. If a detail is missing or feed and page disagree, your product drops out sooner. The first Instant Checkout trial showed this too: Forrester said data on stock, delivery time and shipping costs was not always correct. These are the details to check in your store:
- The price, including VAT and any discounts, identical in the feed and on the product page.
- Stock and delivery time, as current as your system allows.
- Shipping costs per country or region, and the free-shipping threshold.
- Return terms, in a clear text of their own that you can reach from the product.
- A product description that says what the product suits, which sizes or variants exist and which features matter.
- Product identifiers such as the brand and the EAN number (the European barcode), so an assistant recognizes the same product across different stores.
What does it cost you to do nothing?
Little in the short term, because shopping in ChatGPT is not open to Dutch buyers yet. The risk lies in the habit that is forming. According to Q&A Retail, half of Dutch consumers already use AI while shopping, and for some of them research starts there. A store with sloppy product data falls behind in that comparison. You need clean data for Google Shopping and your own site anyway, so the effort is not wasted.
How do you tackle this in a small online store?
Start small and make it a routine. In week one, pick your ten best-selling products and check them against the list above. Fix discrepancies in your store system itself. If you only correct them in a separate export file, they come back with the next update. After that, schedule a monthly fifteen-minute check: sample five products, see whether the feed still matches, and look for new terms at Google Merchant Center or your payment provider. If you want help with the link between shop, feed and site, we are happy to look at it under websites. Questions about visibility in AI answers belong under AI, and ads in ChatGPT and Google under marketing.
What is still to be seen
OpenAI and Google name no date for the Netherlands. It is unclear whether ACP, UCP or both will become the norm. Etsy said in March 2026 that an app may not be the end point. The Visa and Mastercard trials in Europe run with selected stores and banks.
What we do with it
Instant Checkout was never available in the Netherlands. At Make it Matter, we look at how agentic commerce can work in practice for our clients: how it fits existing marketing and sales strategies, and how SEO and AI discovery reinforce each other.
Frequently asked questions
Can I pay inside ChatGPT in the Netherlands?
No. Instant Checkout has not been a standalone feature since March 2026, and OpenAI says shopping in ChatGPT is live only in the United States. Shoppers discover products in ChatGPT and pay on the store's site or in its app.
What is the Agentic Commerce Protocol?
The Agentic Commerce Protocol (ACP) is an open standard from OpenAI and Stripe. It governs how stores share product feeds, carts and orders with AI assistants. Since March 24, 2026, it also covers product discovery, alongside checkout.
What is the difference between ACP and UCP?
ACP comes from OpenAI and Stripe. The Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP) was developed by Google with Shopify, Etsy, Wayfair, Target and Walmart, among others. Both describe how an AI assistant talks to a store. For sellers, Stripe supports both in one integration.
Do I need to change my online store for AI assistants?
You do not need to build any special technology. Make sure price, stock, shipping costs and delivery time are correct everywhere, that your Merchant Center feed is current and that OAI-SearchBot is not blocked in your robots.txt. Regular search engines benefit from that too.
Should I advertise in ChatGPT?
You do not have to. Ads in ChatGPT have been open in the Netherlands since the end of August 2026, but they only appear for users on a Free or Go plan. Try it with a small budget if you want to test, and do not expect direct sales inside ChatGPT itself.
Does my Shopify or WooCommerce store already take part?
According to OpenAI, a Shopify catalog is in ChatGPT by default, but Shopify says only US shoppers can buy through AI channels. WooCommerce says agentic checkout for Stripe for WooCommerce is still coming, with no date.
