OpenAI Launches ChatGPT Wallet Enabling AI Agents to Purchase for Users

OpenAI on Friday launched ChatGPT Wallet, a payment feature that lets its "dots" AI agents complete purchases on a user's behalf. The wallet is limited at first to ChatGPT Pro subscribers in the United States who are 18 or older, and every purchase requires a security check such as Face ID or a fingerprint scan. OpenAI built it with American Express, MA and V. Users enter a card once, and the payment network hands the agent a payment token, a transaction-specific card number, security code and expiration date, so neither the agent nor the merchant sees the real card details, while existing rewards and dispute protections carry over.

The launch is OpenAI's latest push into agentic commerce after earlier attempts stalled: it pivoted away from an Instant Checkout feature introduced last fall and relaunched its shopping experience in March. OpenAI said it is not taking a cut of transactions to start, so the near-term goal is relationships with merchants and payment networks rather than revenue. ChatGPT has more than 1.2 billion weekly active users and nearly 100 million paying users as of the end of the third quarter, and AXP executive Luke Gebb told CNBC that OpenAI can "turn up the volume" on the wallet when it chooses. Separately, OpenAI opened Businesses in ChatGPT in beta, a hub where companies can set up a presence to reach those weekly users.

The open question is merchant access. The wallet does not work on sites that block agents, and resistance is visible: UAL said this week it will block AI agents from booking tickets, and AMZN prevents agents from buying on its platform. OpenAI published guidance to help merchants avoid inadvertently blocking its agents. For the card networks the wallet is a test of whether tokenized agent payments become a meaningful new transaction channel; the signals to watch are expansion beyond Pro subscribers, the merchants that opt in, and whether OpenAI later starts charging a fee.