PayPal is stepping boldly into the AI-powered shopping era with the launch of its new agentic commerce services — a suite of tools designed to help merchants reach customers through AI-driven discovery, payments, and fulfillment experiences.

Announced today, the initiative positions PayPal as one of the first major fintech players to formalize a commerce infrastructure built for AI agents — digital assistants capable of autonomously searching, recommending, and even purchasing products on behalf of users.

“AI is driving the next wave of innovation in how payments are made and managed,” said Michelle Gill, GM of Small Business and Financial Services at PayPal. “Our agentic commerce services connect merchants to millions of consumers using agent platforms for everyday shopping.”

Building the Framework for AI Shopping

At the core of PayPal’s new offering are two capabilities: Agent Ready and Store Sync. Together, they aim to bridge merchants’ existing operations with emerging AI ecosystems like Perplexity, as well as conversational and browser-automated experiences.

Agent Ready, PayPal’s agentic payment solution, allows millions of existing PayPal merchants to accept payments directly on AI surfaces — from chat-based transactions to automated browser shopping. It enables fraud detection, buyer protection, and dispute resolution automatically, requiring no additional technical integration.

Meanwhile, Store Sync gives merchants a way to make their product catalogs discoverable within AI channels, linking inventory and order management systems with major e-commerce platforms including Wix, Cymbio, BigCommerce (via Feedonomics), and Shopware.

The goal: let AI agents not just find products but complete purchases seamlessly, while merchants maintain ownership of customer data, communications, and brand visibility.

AI Discovery Meets Commerce Infrastructure

The move reflects a larger trend reshaping digital commerce. As AI search and recommendation engines — like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity — become gateways for discovery, the rules of online retail are shifting. PayPal’s open integration approach means merchants can appear across multiple AI ecosystems through a single connection, effectively creating one-to-many compatibility for AI-driven sales.

With Store Sync, PayPal is betting on what it calls intent-driven shopping, where customers skip traditional browsing and buy directly through AI recommendations. Early integrations with Perplexity are set to roll out by the end of 2025, while Agent Ready will debut in early 2026.

Why This Matters

PayPal’s move signals how AI agents are becoming new intermediaries in e-commerce, similar to how search engines and marketplaces once were. By providing a framework of trust, verification, and payment protection, PayPal hopes to set the standard for AI-native commerce — one that prioritizes transparency, compliance, and consumer security.

The company’s strength lies in its infrastructure: decades of global payment trust, identity verification, and dispute management. By adapting those pillars for AI, PayPal is effectively future-proofing its ecosystem against the next generation of online shopping.

For merchants, the promise is twofold — greater visibility in AI discovery and simpler integration without the technical overhead of traditional e-commerce expansion.

As agentic shopping accelerates, PayPal’s launch could become a defining moment in how fintech giants evolve from payment processors to AI-era commerce enablers.