Perplexity has announced a partnership with PayPal to allow U.S. users to buy products directly inside its chat interface. The new feature is expected to roll out this summer to U.S. Pro subscribers. Shoppers will soon be able to search, shop, and pay without leaving the platform. Checkout will be completed using PayPal or Venmo.

The deal is part of the company’s push into “agentic commerce.” The tool will handle payment, shipping, and invoicing without the need for manual input. According to the release, PayPal’s fraud detection, account linking, and passkey features will power the backend. Users may not need to type passwords or fill out forms.

Conversational commerce is reshaping online shopping

The entire push into AI-enabled commerce is changing how users shop and transact. Tools like Google Shopping are built on browsing behavior. Users search, compare prices across different sellers, and click through to buy. However, shopping behavior is changing fast. More consumers are skipping traditional search engines and turning to generative AI tools for product discovery. A Salesforce report noted that 47% of global shoppers are interested in letting AI agents make purchases for them.

That interest is pushing platforms like Perplexity and ChatGPT to build new shopping experiences into their chatbots. Last year, Perplexity launched an in-app shopping tool for Pro users to search for products and place orders directly on the platform. This new partnership with PayPal builds on this tool. Now, Perplexity can handle the entire purchase process within the chatbot. 

What makes this different from other shopping experiences?

The ability to complete a purchase inside a chat platform, without redirects or extra steps, is a major shift. Perplexity is removing the need to visit a merchant’s site. This makes it different from ChatGPT and Google.

ChatGPT introduced a shopping feature last month. The new feature allows users to ask about products, and the chatbot shows product details, prices, and customer reviews. However, shoppers are redirected to the retailer’s website to complete their transaction.

This is similar to Google Shopping. The platform displays sponsored listings and product carousels at the top of its search page. But while it offers these listings that link to retailer websites, it does not yet support in-chat commerce. 

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