4 of 5 shopping agents can finish checkout. ChatGPT’s page says the store does.

Read November 11, 2026. Every cell below is a sentence from the company’s own page, or a statement that the page does not publish the fact.

4 of 5. Google, Amazon, Microsoft Copilot, and Perplexity can complete a purchase. ChatGPT’s merchant page says the shopper discovers the product in the chat and pays on the merchant’s website or app.

Amazon is the outlier inside the four, and only on one of its paths. The Alexa for Shopping article updated October 29, 2026 says you can tell it to buy headphones at 30 percent off, or a t-shirt at $15, and it will charge the default payment method when the price hits. Google Pay, Copilot’s Pay now, Perplexity’s Instant Buy, and Amazon’s own Buy for Me button still wait for the shopper to confirm a checkout. The product decision is which of those permissions you are willing to grant.

The same morning, OpenAI’s Key concepts guide carried Last-Modified: Wed, 11 Nov 2026 10:33:13 GMT and still told merchants that checkout renders inside ChatGPT. Two OpenAI documents, one date, two checkouts. The table uses the merchant page for what a shopper can do today, and it keeps the 10:33 guide in the ChatGPT row so a builder does not implement the wrong one.

Who can take the payment, on the pages read today

Five assistants. Six rows, because Amazon describes two different purchases. A merchant named in a launch post is an example from that post, not a catalog as of this morning. A fee cell says “not published” when the page does not state a commission. It does not mean the fee is zero.

Who can pay, in the longer narrative checked through November 10, is Can an AI shopping agent check out for you?. The dated company calendar through May 2027 is AI shopping agents, the next 6 months. This page is the head-to-head those two do not draw: protocol, published fee, country, and the confirmation gate, on one date.

ChatGPT’s merchant page and its checkout guide were both live this morning

The merchant page, read November 11, answers its own question in the FAQ. “Can users buy directly inside ChatGPT?” The answer on the page: OpenAI is moving away from a standalone Instant Checkout, and purchases are completed on merchant-owned websites or apps. A second FAQ line says there are no fees on purchases that start in ChatGPT. The section above that says the default is to send shoppers to the site or app, with no fees for purchases made there.

Key concepts, touched at 10:33 UTC the same day, still opens with “Supporting Instant Checkout in ChatGPT.” It says the Agentic Checkout Spec lets ChatGPT render checkout in ChatGPT’s UI. The merchant validates the cart, calculates tax, and charges the payment method on the merchant’s processor. OpenAI is not the merchant of record. Stripe’s Shared Payment Token is named as the first delegated-payment implementation. The guide does not restate the September fee, and it does not say the embedded checkout has been withdrawn.

Those are two integrations. A feed that sends a shopper to your site is the one the merchant page is selling, at a published fee of zero. An embedded session is the one the developer guide still specifies. The March 24, 2026 post is the course change between them. OpenAI wrote that the first Instant Checkout was not flexible enough, and that merchants would use their own checkout while ChatGPT focused on discovery. The same post names a Walmart app inside ChatGPT with Walmart payments. This check did not reopen that app, so the table does not treat it as a confirmed November 11 checkout.

The September 29, 2025 launch is the fee sentence people still quote. “Merchants pay a small fee on completed purchases.” The service was free for users. The post said the fee does not change the price and does not change ranking. It did not publish a percent or a flat amount. Single-item purchases, U.S. accounts, U.S. Etsy sellers, Shopify “coming soon.” Quoting that sentence in a November contract, without a number, is quoting a product OpenAI’s own merchant page now describes as the one it is leaving.

The spec versions behind the letters ACP and UCP, read November 10, are OpenAI’s checkout example is still API version 2025-09-12. Package installs for ACP, UCP, AP2, and x402, read November 11, are the commerce-protocol census. This table does not re-count stars or re-pin those tags.

Amazon will spend on a sentence you already sent

The October 29 article is specific. “Buy these headphones when they're 30% off.” “Purchase this t-shirt when it's $15 or less.” Alexa for Shopping checks the price and either alerts you or completes the purchase with the default payment method. That is an agentic checkout with the confirmation moved earlier, into the rule. The guardrail is the price cap and the card already on the account, not a second tap at the moment of the charge.

The same article describes a weaker automation beside it. Scheduled Actions can restock pet food or paper towels by adding them to the cart. You still check out. A harness that treats “add to cart” and “charge the default card” as the same tool call is misreading the page. They are two permissions.

Buy for Me is the third permission. You tap the button on an eligible product from another store. Amazon shows its own checkout. You confirm the address, the tax, the shipping fee, and the payment method. Amazon’s agent then completes the brand’s checkout. The April 3, 2025 post says Amazon cannot see your other orders on that brand’s site, and that the brand sends the confirmation and handles delivery and returns. The customer is buying from the brand. Amazon is the agent that types the payment into the brand’s page, after the confirm screen.

The April post called this a beta for a subset of U.S. customers and a limited set of brand stores, in the Shopping app. The October 29 article, seven months later, still says U.S. customers and eligible products. It does not say the beta has ended, and it does not say every U.S. account sees the button. If the button is missing, the page you can trust is the one in the app, not this summary.

Google’s button is UCP. The zero fee is Shopify’s sentence.

Universal Cart, October 15, 2026, launched in the U.S. on Search and in the Gemini app. Checkout with Google Pay happens in the cart for stores including Nike, Sephora, Target, Ulta Beauty, Walmart, Wayfair, and many Shopify merchants. The other path transfers the items to the merchant’s cart and finishes on the merchant’s site. Either way, the merchant remains the seller of record and sends the confirmation.

Canada, November 4, is direct checkout powered by UCP, rolling out on AI Mode and in the Gemini app for lululemon, select Shopify merchants, Shoppers Drug Mart, and Simons. Shoppers pay with Google Pay from Google Wallet. Simplified UCP tools inside Merchant Center start next year. Loyalty rewards are “in the coming months.” Neither phrase is a fee.

The Merchant Center help page, read November 11, limits that checkout article to products eligible in the United States, Canada, and Australia, for participating merchants. It says the new checkout happens on Google’s surfaces and the merchant stays the seller of record. The credential it names is a funding primary account number already stored in Google Wallet. It says the Buy button shows only on listings that use the native_commerce checkout attribute. It does not print a commission, a percent, or a per-order charge.

Shopify does print a fee, and the fee is zero channel fee. Its Google AI Mode and Gemini help, read November 11, says there are no fees for selling in that direct checkout, and that the store pays its standard payment processing fees. The store can be based in any country. It has to sell to customers in the United States, Canada, or Australia. Direct checkout is on by default for an eligible store, and it is rolling out gradually to customers in those three countries. A customer without the rollout is sent to the store. That zero is Shopify’s price for Shopify’s checkout. It is not a sentence on Google’s blog.

UCP, on Google’s help page, is compatible with Agent2Agent, the Agent Payments Protocol, and MCP. The pages read today do not say which of those three carried a given Google Pay charge.

Copilot’s live page says UCP. The January post said ACP.

Microsoft’s agentic commerce page, read November 11, says Copilot Checkout keeps the purchase inside Copilot, on Copilot.com and the Copilot mobile app. The merchant stays the merchant of record and uses the merchant’s payments, fraud, tax, fulfillment, and reconciliation. Eligibility is English-language merchants who sell to U.S. buyers, in USD. The FAQ says Microsoft cannot give a timeline for other countries. One PSP per merchant. The PSP that finishes onboarding first is the checkout partner unless the merchant asks to switch.

The same page says the Merchant Center feed has to be UCP-compliant, and it defines UCP as the layer that turns a discovery feed into a transaction. The January 8, 2026 post said Microsoft is adopting ACP so onboarding stays scalable. A merchant who certified against the January sentence and a merchant who certifies against the November page are not holding the same protocol name. Pin the page you signed, and read the November 10 version note before you treat the two acronyms as interchangeable.

The fee gap matches the protocol gap. The November 11 Microsoft page does not publish a commission or an affiliate fee. Shopify’s Copilot help does: no fees for the direct checkout, only standard payment processing. Direct checkout is on by default, shown only to customers in the United States, and the store must sell to the United States. Pay now takes a credit or debit card. Subscription-only products, bundles, customizable products, and B2B-only products are unsupported. Google Analytics and custom pixels do not fire. Local delivery and pickup do not either.

One more contradiction, dated. On January 8 Microsoft wrote that a Merchant Center account is not required to sell through Copilot Checkout. The November 11 FAQ says yes, an account is required to onboard, and a product feed is required for discovery and checkout. Shopify’s help, read the same day, still says an eligible Shopify store does not apply. Three sentences, three scopes. The Shopify path, the Merchant Center path, and the January announcement are not one onboarding.

The January 8 launch list was Urban Outfitters, Anthropologie, Ashley Furniture, and Etsy sellers, with PayPal, Shopify, and Stripe as the partner routes. That list is the launch list. It is not a November 11 directory of every Copilot merchant.

Perplexity checks out in the U.S. The fee is not on the page.

PayPal’s November 25, 2025 release says U.S. users can go from research to purchase inside Perplexity, and that the retailer remains the merchant of record. The launch names are Abercrombie & Fitch, Ashley Furniture, Fabletics, Adorama, and Newegg. PayPal’s store sync makes the catalog discoverable. PayPal’s existing configuration takes the payment. The release does not state a percent, a flat fee, or a zero.

Perplexity’s Instant Buy help article, retrieved November 11, says U.S. users can buy from merchants compatible with the checkout, that the order and payment go to the merchant, and that Enterprise Pro and Enterprise Max are excluded. The merchant examples in that text include Wayfair, Abercrombie & Fitch, and merchants on BigCommerce, Shopware, and Wix. A direct request for the help URL from this check hit a block and did not return a Last-Modified header. Those sentences are the article text retrieved that day. They are not a claim that every PayPal merchant has a button.

No page read for this comparison assigns Instant Buy to ACP, UCP, or AP2. The protocol cell stays empty on purpose. Calling it ACP because PayPal also appears in other assistants’ partner lists would be an inference, and this table does not infer a protocol.

What this means if you sell, and if you build the harness

If you sell on Shopify and the channel is Google or Copilot, the fee you can budget from a primary page is zero channel fee plus your existing processor. Turn direct checkout off if the unsupported list hits you: subscriptions, bundles, a pixel you need for attribution, or a pickup order. Discovery can stay on while checkout returns to your site. That switch is in Shopify admin, under the agentic sales channel.

If you sell through ChatGPT’s feed, the merchant page you would sign today prices the handoff at zero and puts the charge on your site. Do not put the September “small fee” into a forecast. It has no number, and it describes the embedded checkout the merchant page says OpenAI is leaving. If a partner asks you to implement the embedded session anyway, the document is the 10:33 UTC guide, the merchant remains the merchant of record, and you still do not have a published percent.

If you sell into Amazon’s price-target flow, you are not integrating a protocol. You are accepting that a U.S. customer can pre-authorize a default card against a price. Buy for Me is the opposite shape: the customer confirms on Amazon’s page, and your store receives an order the agent placed. The April post says brands can choose whether to participate. The October page does not publish a rate card.

If you are building a harness, match the tool to the permission these products actually shipped. Tool use for a shopping agent is a catalog read, a cart write, and, only sometimes, a payment. The payment tool in this set is one of four shapes.

1. A price rule plus a default card, which is Amazon’s October 29 path, and the only one that spends later without a second tap.
2. A checkout the person completes inside the assistant: Google Pay, Copilot’s Pay now, Perplexity’s Instant Buy.
3. A handoff that opens the merchant’s site, which is ChatGPT’s merchant page, Google’s transfer-to-merchant-cart path, and any Copilot or Google listing whose direct checkout is off.
4. An agent that drives the merchant’s own checkout after a confirm screen, which is Buy for Me.

A prompt that says “buy the best headphones” is not a policy. The policy is which of those four tools the harness is allowed to call, the maximum amount, and what it does when the feed price and the product page disagree. An eval for that policy is narrow. Did the charged amount match the approved amount? Did the item id match the feed row? Did the run stop when the only available tool was a handoff? The six-month shopping report is the calendar of what these companies have dated through May 2027. This page is the button, the protocol name, and the published fee, as of November 11.

Frequently asked questions

Which AI shopping agents can complete checkout on November 11, 2026?

Four of the five. Google, Amazon, Copilot, and Perplexity can complete a purchase on the paths in the table. ChatGPT’s merchant page says the purchase finishes on the store’s website or app.

Does ChatGPT still have Instant Checkout?

The merchant page says OpenAI is moving away from it. The developer guide, Last-Modified at 10:33 UTC on November 11, 2026, still describes checkout rendered in ChatGPT. The September 29, 2025 post is the one that mentioned a small merchant fee, without an amount.

What fee does a merchant pay?

Shopify says no channel fee for its direct checkout on Google or Copilot, only standard processing fees. Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and PayPal do not publish a commission on the pages read for their own checkouts. OpenAI’s merchant page says there is no fee on purchases that start in ChatGPT.

Which protocol does each assistant name?

Google names UCP, and says it is compatible with A2A, AP2, and MCP. Microsoft’s November 11 page names UCP. Microsoft’s January 8 post named ACP. ChatGPT names ACP. Amazon and Perplexity’s pages read here do not name those protocols.

Will any of these agents buy with no second tap?

Amazon’s October 29 article says the price-target purchase charges the default payment method when the price hits. Buy for Me, Google Pay, Copilot, and Instant Buy all stop for a checkout the shopper completes. ChatGPT’s merchant page sends the shopper to the store.

Which countries?

The U.S. is the country every one of these pages describes. Google adds a Canada direct-checkout rollout from November 4, 2026, and its Merchant Center help also lists Australia for participating merchants. Copilot’s page says it cannot give a timeline for other countries. ChatGPT’s merchant page says more regions over time, with no date.