Agentic commerce: what buying inside ChatGPT and Google AI Mode means for your shop

What "agentic commerce" means

An AI agent is software that can take steps for you, not just answer questions. In shopping, that means an assistant like ChatGPT or Google's AI Mode can suggest products, compare them, and sometimes complete the purchase for the shopper once they say yes.

For a shop owner, the important change is simple. The first place a customer meets your product may no longer be your website or a Google results page. It may be a chat window. What the AI knows about your products depends almost entirely on the product data you give it.

What OpenAI launched, and what it changed

On 29 September 2025 OpenAI announced Instant Checkout. US users of ChatGPT could buy single items from US Etsy sellers without leaving the chat, with Shopify merchants listed as coming soon. It ran on the Agentic Commerce Protocol (ACP), an open standard OpenAI built with Stripe. Two details matter for any shop:

• The merchant stays the merchant of record. You handle payment, delivery, returns and support through your own systems.
• OpenAI said results are organic and not sponsored. When several shops sell the same product, ChatGPT looks at things like availability, price, quality and whether the shop is the main seller.

Six months later the plan changed. In a post called Powering Product Discovery in ChatGPT (24 March 2026), OpenAI wrote that "the initial version of Instant Checkout did not offer the level of flexibility that we aspire to provide". Merchants can now use their own checkout, and OpenAI is putting its effort into helping people discover products. Shops share product feeds and promotions through ACP, directly or through providers such as Salesforce and Stripe. Shopify merchants are already connected through Shopify Catalog.

I think this is the most useful lesson of the year. Even the biggest AI company found checkout inside a chat harder than expected. Discovery is where the real change is happening.

What Google launched

Google moved in two steps. On 13 November 2025 it rolled out agentic checkout on Search, including AI Mode, for eligible US merchants. A shopper tracks the price of a product, sets a budget, and when the price drops Google can buy it on the merchant's site with Google Pay, but only after the shopper confirms.

Then on 11 January 2026 Google announced the Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP), an open standard co-developed with Shopify, Etsy, Wayfair, Target and Walmart. UCP powers checkout on eligible product listings in AI Mode and the Gemini app. Retailers stay the seller of record. In the same announcement Google said it is adding dozens of new Merchant Center attributes for AI surfaces, such as answers to common product questions, compatible accessories and substitutes.

Google's Merchant Center help page on UCP is clear about the limits. Right now it only applies to products eligible in the United States, Canada and Australia, for selected merchants who apply. Only listings with a specific checkout attribute show the "Buy" button.

Is this relevant if you sell in Cyprus or Greece?

Checkout inside ChatGPT or Gemini is not available to shops in Cyprus or Greece yet. But I would not wait. Both companies are building the same foundation: structured product data that an AI can read, trust and compare. That data already feeds Google Shopping, free listings and AI answers today. When checkout reaches Europe, the shops with clean feeds will be ready first.

How to prepare your product data

OpenAI publishes its product feed specification. It is a good checklist even if you never send a feed to OpenAI, because it is close to what Google Merchant Center asks for. The required fields are:

• A product ID, title, description and product page URL.
• Brand and seller name.
• A main image URL.
• Availability (in stock, out of stock, pre-order and so on).
• Price with the currency code.

The same document gives advice I agree with from years of running an e-shop:

1. Update price and stock when they change. Dates in a file do not schedule anything. If a sale ends and your feed still shows the sale price, the AI shows the wrong price.
2. Keep product IDs stable. Do not change an ID when the price, title or image changes, and never put the price inside an ID.
3. Use full, public HTTPS links for product pages and images.

On top of that, write descriptions that answer real questions: size, material, compatibility, what is in the box. Google's new attributes for AI are exactly this kind of information. An AI cannot recommend your product for "a laptop bag that fits 15 inches" if your description never says 15 inches.

What this means for businesses in Cyprus and Greece

Most shops here run on WooCommerce, Shopify or a custom platform, often with a product feed that was set up once and never checked again. At Bionic I learned that the feed is not a technical side job. It is the shop window for every channel that is not your own website. Agentic commerce makes that even more true.

My practical advice for a small shop: get your Google Merchant Center account clean, make sure price and stock sync at least daily, and rewrite your top 20 product descriptions so they answer the questions customers ask you in the store or on the phone. If you use Shopify, check your catalog settings, because OpenAI says Shopify merchants are already connected. Then watch for news of UCP and ACP opening to European merchants.

Questions people ask

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Sources

1. Buy it in ChatGPT: Instant Checkout and the Agentic Commerce Protocol, OpenAI, September 2025
2. Powering Product Discovery in ChatGPT, OpenAI, March 2026
3. Products - Agentic Commerce, OpenAI Developers
4. Let AI do the hard parts of your holiday shopping, Google, November 2025
5. New tech and tools for retailers to succeed in an agentic shopping era, Google Ads and Commerce Blog, January 2026
6. About the Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP) and UCP-powered checkout feature on Google, Google Merchant Center Help