PayPal Taps Into ChatGPT’s Instant Checkout 🛍️

PayPal has joined the bandwagon! Looks like ChatGPT is signing the top guns. 

Hi there, and welcome to another issue of The Ecom Press 🗞️!

This week, besides news from OpenAI and PayPal, we’ve got Amazon rolling out a shopping sidekick to help you pick the right product faster, and a startup promising websites that optimize themselves (yes, really 🤯).

We’ve also curated a fresh batch of AI tools to help you work smarter this season.

Ready or not, let’s go 🚀! 

In a rush? Here's the juice🤭:

🛍️ PayPal taps into ChatGPT’s Instant Checkout.

🤖 Amazon debuts AI tool for smarter shopping decisions.

🌐 Moonshot AI raises $10M to build self-optimizing ecommerce sites.

🧰 Tool spotlight: 5 AI tools transforming ecommerce this week

⚡️Worthy Mentions

🛍️ PayPal taps into ChatGPT’s Instant Checkout.

PayPal is officially joining OpenAI’s agentic commerce push, enabling ChatGPT users to shop and pay merchants directly using their PayPal wallet. The partnership extends PayPal’s reach across OpenAI’s growing in-chat shopping ecosystem, while making millions of merchant products discoverable inside ChatGPT.

See it in action!

Here’s the lowdown ⬇️:

🔗 ACP Integration: PayPal is adopting the Agentic Commerce Protocol (ACP), allowing merchants’ product catalogs to surface in AI apps like ChatGPT without requiring new integrations. PayPal will handle routing, validation, and payments behind the scenes.

🧾 Instant Checkout with PayPal: Shoppers can now use their PayPal wallet, including bank, card, or balance, to check out directly in ChatGPT. PayPal’s buyer and seller protections, dispute resolution, and post-purchase tracking are also included.

🛒 Merchant Discovery at Scale (Starting 2026): Tens of millions of small and large PayPal merchants across categories like fashion, beauty, electronics, and home improvement will become searchable and purchasable through ChatGPT.

🧠 AI Enablement for PayPal: Beyond commerce, PayPal will roll out ChatGPT Enterprise access to its 24,000+ employees, integrate OpenAI Codex for engineers, and expand internal use of OpenAI APIs.

Why it matters 🤔

This update pushes ChatGPT even closer to becoming a true end-to-end shopping channel. And for ecommerce brands using PayPal, it means your products may soon be discoverable and purchasable directly inside ChatGPT. No need for separate integrations or additional spend.

🤖 Amazon debuts AI tool for smarter shopping decisions.

Amazon has introduced a new AI-powered shopping tool called “Help Me Decide” aimed at streamlining purchase decisions for shoppers browsing through similar items. The feature is now live for millions of U.S. users via the Amazon Shopping app (iOS and Android) and mobile browser.

🔹 What It Does:

“Help Me Decide” uses large language models (LLMs) and Amazon’s AWS tools (Bedrock, OpenSearch, and SageMaker) to analyze:

• Browsing history

• Past searches

• Shopping patterns

• Product views and purchases

Using this data, it offers a personalized recommendation for the most suitable product within a category and clearly explains why the suggestion fits the user’s needs. It also surfaces an upgrade pick and a budget-friendly alternative for more flexibility.

The feature activates when users have been browsing multiple listings without making a decision. It appears:

• At the top of product detail pages as the “Help Me Decide” button

• Or under the “Keep shopping for” section on the app homepage

📱 How to Use “Help Me Decide” (3 Steps)

1. Browse several similar items – the “Help Me Decide” button appears automatically.

2.  Tap the button – Amazon analyzes your activity and shows a top product, with reasons why it fits you (features, review highlights, etc.).

3.  See more options – Amazon also suggests an upgrade and a budget pick.

Why it matters 🤷‍♂️

This feature is part of Amazon’s broader aim to make online shopping more efficient, personalized, and less overwhelming, especially as the catalog continues to grow. We can tell that the bar for convenience and trust is rising fast.

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🌐 Moonshot AI raises $10M to build self-optimizing ecommerce sites.

Moonshot AI, a New York–based startup, has secured $10 million in seed funding to scale its AI-powered platform that teaches websites to optimize themselves. The company’s no-code system uses generative AI to analyze visitor behavior, test new site experiences in real time, and automatically roll out what converts best.

Here are the deets ⬇️: 

💰 $10M Seed Round: The round was led by Mighty Capital, with participation from Oceans Ventures, Uncorrelated, Garuda Ventures, and Almaz Capital. The funds will go toward expanding Moonshot’s engineering and customer success teams as it grows in ecommerce and DTC markets.

⚙️ AI That “Learns by Doing”: Moonshot’s platform monitors user activity, generates alternative layouts or experiences, tests them live, and deploys the top performer, effectively making websites that evolve continuously to drive conversions and revenue.

📈 Proven Results: Early ecommerce users, including DefenAge and Yáneken, have seen up to a 30% uplift in revenue per visitor within months of using the system.

🧠 Built from Ecommerce Pain Points: Co-founders Aviv Frenkel and Evyatar Segal created Moonshot after struggling with manual optimization in their own online businesses. As Frenkel put it: “Conversion rate optimization is like voodoo — we wanted a system that could fix that.”

Why it matters 🤨

Moonshot’s model challenges the traditional method of manually doing updates, letting your site evolve as customer behavior changes. If your team stretched thin, automated optimization could mean higher conversions without more campaigns or code. Ultimately, performance design might become a living, self-learning layer of every store.

🛎️ The Ecom Press Insider

Ecom Fact: The U.S. B2C retail market alone could generate up to $1 trillion in orchestrated revenue from agentic commerce by 2030, with global estimates ranging from $3 to $5 trillion (Source: McKinsey).

💡 Takeaway: Agentic commerce is not a buzzword anymore because we’re already knee-deep in it. This is the time to start optimizing your product data, feed quality, and post-purchase experience. You sure want to get those AI signals right for your brand!

🧰 Tool spotlight: 5 AI tools transforming ecommerce this week

AI isn't just behind the scenes anymore; it's taking the wheel in content creation, checkout personalization, and product optimization. Whether you're running lean or scaling fast, these five tools can give your ecommerce brand a sharper edge:

1. Angie by Salsify – Your AI Product Ops Assistant 🧠

Built into Salsify’s PXM platform, this AI assistant helps you write, troubleshoot, and optimize product formulas using plain English. From auto-categorizing Amazon listings to content compliance checks, Angie takes the grunt work out of syndication.

2. Smart Basket – AI-Powered Checkout Personalization 🛒

Smart Basket uses AI to personalize checkout in real-time, optimizing discounts, rewards, and payment methods based on each customer’s behavior. It also supports “one-tap” reorders and loyalty integrations, helping to cut cart abandonment and boost repurchase rates.

3. Brandy AI – Automated Merchandising and Branding 🎨

Brandy AI helps ecommerce teams automate consistent, on-brand creative, from packaging to UI elements. It’s ideal for small brands that want sharp visuals across every digital touchpoint without a full-time designer.

4. Rakuten AI – Hyper-Personalized Shopping with Cultural Fluency 🧭

Straight out of Japan’s largest ecommerce marketplace, Rakuten AI delivers product discovery through conversational, voice, and visual interfaces. It anticipates shopper needs with deep cultural context, enabling more intuitive search and stronger cross-sells.

5. Lovart – Creative Campaigns from Text Prompts 🧰

Lovart is like having a creative director on speed dial. It transforms your brand ideas into visual campaigns, from packaging to product videos, while learning your brand style as it goes. Perfect for product launches or refreshing your store’s visual identity in time for holiday traffic.

⚡️Worthy Mentions

• Alibaba launches AI chatbot and AI glasses. 

• Twitch ads now let viewers buy E.l.f. products while watching live streams.

• OpenAI launches ChatGPT Atlas, a browser enhanced with AI assistance.

• Grubhub x Instacart team up to expand grocery delivery.

• Amazon plans to replace 500K workers with robots by 2033.

Wrapping up…

Instant Checkout is clearly evolving into a full-on ecosystem — and we’re betting more big names will plug in soon.

But the real kicker? Self-optimizing websites. It’s giving “set it and scale” energy — and we’re here for it 💪. 

Stay locked in, because we’ll keep bringing the updates that matter, every week. In the meantime, hit that subscribe button, forward to a fellow ecommerce nerd, and keep building!