OpenAI has launched ChatGPT Wallet, which lets dots, the personal agents inside ChatGPT, complete purchases for users once they approve. The feature began rolling out the same day. The first wave is limited to ChatGPT Pro subscribers in the US who are 18 or older, and the linked card must be a US-issued Visa, Mastercard or American Express, the three card networks that are also partners in the launch.
How a single payment works
The flow has three steps. The user first adds a card to the wallet, then asks a dot to pick products and fill in the order. Before payment, ChatGPT lists the items, the total and the selected card, and the user checks them and approves with a security check such as Face ID or a fingerprint.
Once approved, the payment network generates a payment token that is charged in place of the real card number, security code and expiry date. According to OpenAI, neither the agent nor the merchant ever sees the actual card details, and each approval leaves a purchase record behind. Existing credit card rewards still accrue as usual, and eligible dispute protections are unaffected. OpenAI describes the design this way:
"setting a new bar for secure payments by agents"
The announcement gives no per-purchase or daily spending limit and does not mention fees. CNBC separately reported that OpenAI is not taking a cut of transactions at launch. The official announcement does not say this, so whether charges will come later cannot be confirmed.
The sticking point is the merchant side
The wallet governs how payment is made. Whether an agent can get through a merchant's door is a separate hurdle. 9to5Mac noted that the feature does not work on sites that block agent access. Amazon has already shut out Meta Muse's shopping features, and Android Authority added that United Airlines has announced restrictions on agent access to its platform, including access through travel agencies and price-comparison platforms.
OpenAI also released a Commerce Partner Playbook for merchants, with tools and practices for supporting "agentic customers"; one of its goals is making sure agents can get in. As for the limited rollout, the company says it wants to learn from real-world use, then work with merchants, banks and payment networks to improve compatibility and reliability.
OpenAI's longer-term vision is considerably more ambitious:
"Over time, we expect users to be able to delegate purchases entirely to their agent"
In practice, that means users would set a spending cap, product categories or time windows and pre-authorize purchases under stronger safeguards. The announcement does not say when this step will arrive or which users will get it first.
The counterparts in China
Users in China cannot use it for now: the bar is a US-issued card plus a US Pro account. Still, getting AI to pay on a person's behalf is also moving ahead in China, along a rather different path. As previously reported on this site, WeChat Pay has issued AI a dedicated card, with about 700 skills that can be called for a fee, and Qwen has connected to 4 billion items on Taobao so that its agent can handle purchasing end to end.
Side by side, OpenAI's approach is a general-purpose agent plus card-network tokens: the agent browses the open web and checks out at each merchant, card security is covered by Visa, Mastercard and American Express tokens, and the hardest part is whether merchants are willing to let the agent in. The two Chinese approaches look more like closed loops inside an ecosystem, where the payment provider or the e-commerce platform is itself the agent's owner. Merchant access is already settled within the ecosystem, and the price is that the agent can mostly operate only on its own turf.
For teams in China running cross-border e-commerce or independent stores, this news has a practical side. A group of buyers whose orders are placed by agents is emerging among US consumers, and whether to open a site to agents, and how to identify and handle them, is becoming an operations question. OpenAI's merchant playbook can serve as a reference point.
Sources: OpenAI product announcement, 9to5Mac, CocoLoop, Android Authority, CNBC. The announcement and two of the outlets were cross-checked for the rollout scope, the partner card networks and the per-purchase verification flow.