At the beginning of March, OpenAI made clear that its plans for checkout and agentic commerce in ChatGPT were going to change. Now, that vision is beginning to come into focus with newly unveiled details about how OpenAI’s Agentic Commerce Protocol (ACP) will support product discovery and how Walmart’s ChatGPT app will work.

OpenAI lists Target, Sephora, Nordstrom, Lowe’s, Best Buy, The Home Depot and Wayfair among the retailers that have already integrated ACP for discovery.

Walmart is No. 2 in the Top 2000. The database is Digital Commerce 360’s ranking of North America’s online retailers by their annual ecommerce sales.

It is also No. 8 in the Global Online Marketplaces. That database ranks the top such marketplaces by third-party gross merchandise value (GMV).

How is OpenAI’s approach to agentic commerce changing?

OpenAI’s announcement on March 24 echoed priorities that a company representative expressed weeks earlier. At the time, the company seemed poised to prioritize discovery and move the checkout experience away from OpenAI’s initial Instant Checkout vision. Instead, that experience appears to be moving into ChatGPT apps, where merchants could have more control.

In the meantime, Shopify’s ChatGPT use for its merchants and Walmart’s vision for agentic commerce both seemed to indicate that the two companies were rethinking how they would work with ChatGPT.

“We’ve found that the initial version of Instant Checkout did not offer the level of flexibility that we aspire to provide, so we’re allowing merchants to use their own checkout experiences while we focus our efforts on product discovery,” OpenAI wrote in a March 24 blog post. “Merchants interested in experimenting with deeper integrations and native experiences on ChatGPT continue to have the option to develop ChatGPT apps.”

According to OpenAI, the new approach to shopping recommendations will emphasize side-by-side comparisons for shoppers. Ultimately, that may allow them to do more without leaving for a new tab or different website. In the meantime, OpenAI lists speed, relevance and product coverage among the improvements it has made.

For merchants using Shopify ecommerce sites, the Shopify Catalog will integrate with ChatGPT to supply the data it refers to.

“Millions of Shopify merchants are open for business in ChatGPT,” said Mani Fazeli, vice president of product at Shopify. “When buyers look for products, the Shopify Catalog offers the most relevant options from the brands that people love.”

Walmart’s new ChatGPT app

OpenAI spotlighted Walmart’s launch of a new “in-ChatGPT app experience.” That experience would support Walmart customer account linking, loyalty program use and Walmart payments.

“By partnering closely with OpenAI, we’ve been able to learn together as we move quickly to shape what agentic commerce can become,” said Daniel Danker, executive vice president of AI acceleration, product and design at Walmart. “Today’s launch brings Walmart directly into the ChatGPT experience, combining leading conversational AI with the decades of retail expertise we’ve built serving customers.”

Shoppers can already access the experience in web browsers. However, app access in iOS and Android environments is scheduled to follow in the near future.

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