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PayPal has signed a deal with OpenAI to become the first payment provider to offer its services inside ChatGPT.
Starting in early 2026, ChatGPT users will be able to integrate their PayPal wallet with the chatbot to make payments and handle purchases without leaving OpenAI’s interface. It goes both ways, too, with PayPal merchants also able to sell their inventory through ChatGPT, effectively turning the chatbot into a marketplace. (Brace yourself for the ads.)
“We’ve got hundreds of millions of loyal PayPal wallet holders who now will be able to click the ‘Buy with PayPal button’ on ChatGPT and have a safe and secure checkout experience,” PayPal CEO Alex Chriss told CNBC. “It’s a whole new paradigm for shopping. It’s hard to imagine that agentic commerce isn’t going to be a big part of the future.”
This is part of OpenAI’s move to monetize ChatGPT in new ways amid staggering yearly losses and unprecedented investment goals. It has over 800 million active ChatGPT users, but only a few percent actually pay for the service. Encouraging people to buy through ChatGPT, where OpenAI gets a cut of the proceeds, is one way it might be able to make some money from otherwise non-paying users.
Soon, ChatGPT will be able to help with purchases right inside the chatbot. (Credit: OpenAI/PCMag)
It follows similar integrations with Etsy, Shopify, and Walmart, which allow ChatGPT users to purchase items from these platforms directly through ChatGPT. With PayPal as a payment option, the potential for commissions increases significantly.
PayPal aims to get in on the ground floor of the new shopping and search paradigm. If people start asking their AI to find something for them to buy, and then the AI can buy it for them using PayPal, well, that’s just good for PayPal. It’s certainly better than if the contract goes to Revolut, Stripe, or the range of alternative payment platforms.
Positioning itself as the future backbone of agentic commerce, PayPal has also done recent deals with Google and AI firm Perplexity.
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PayPal could also serve as a gateway for those who aren’t interested in interacting directly with ChatGPT. Chriss told CNBC that PayPal will handle the merchant routine, payment validation, and processing for all payments via ChatGPT, so PayPal merchants don’t actually need to sign up to the chatbot for their products to be listed there.
PayPal also announced that it would provide enterprise access to ChatGPT to all staff members and enable its engineers to utilize OpenAI’s Codex coding tool more effectively.
Disclosure: Ziff Davis, PCMag’s parent company, filed a lawsuit against OpenAI in April 2025, alleging it infringed Ziff Davis copyrights in training and operating its AI systems.
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Jon Martindale
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Jon Martindale is a tech journalist from the UK, with 20 years of experience covering all manner of PC components and associated gadgets. He’s written for a range of publications, including ExtremeTech, Digital Trends, Forbes, U.S. News & World Report, and Lifewire, among others. When not writing, he’s a big board gamer and reader, with a particular habit of speed-reading through long manga sagas.
Jon covers the latest PC components, as well as how-to guides on everything from how to take a screenshot to how to set up your cryptocurrency wallet. He particularly enjoys the battles between the top tech giants in CPUs and GPUs, and tries his best not to take sides.
Jon’s gaming PC is built around the iconic 7950X3D CPU, with a 7900XTX backing it up. That’s all the power he needs to play lightweight indie and casual games, as well as more demanding sim titles like Kerbal Space Program. He uses a pair of Jabra Active 8 earbuds and a SteelSeries Arctis Pro wireless headset, and types all day on a Logitech G915 mechanical keyboard.
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