PayPal (PYPL) has signed a deal with privately held OpenAI to have its payments wallet embedded into the ChatGPT artificial intelligence (A.I.) chatbot.
Going forward, users of ChatGPT can pay for items found through online searches conducted using the leading chatbot.
Starting next year, PayPal users will be able to purchase items through ChatGPT and merchants will be able to sell on ChatGPT using PayPal’s online payments technology.
The partnership with PayPal is part of OpenAI’s efforts to broaden ChatGPT’s use to include e-commerce. ChatGPT currently has 700 million weekly users globally.
In September of this year, OpenAI announced that its users could buy from Canada’s Shopify (SHOP), as well as U.S. discount retailer Walmart (WMT).
For PayPal, the deal with OpenAI and ChatGPT broadens its payments ecosystem and gives it access to potentially millions of new customers.
As part of the deal, PayPal will also manage merchant routing, payment validations, and other behind-the-scenes aspects of payment processing on ChatGPT.
Users of ChatGPT will be able to pull funds from linked bank accounts and credit cards to pay for purchases on the A.I. chatbot, and they’ll get consumer protections and dispute resolution.
PayPal’s stock is up 13% on news of the deal with OpenAI. Year-to-date, the company’s share price had declined 18% to trade at $70.25 U.S. per share as of Oct. 27.
