ChatGPT can now shop and pay on behalf of customers using their Visas – National

Visa, one of the world’s largest digital payment platforms, announced this week that it has embedded its payment network into ChatGPT, enabling the chatbot to shop and complete transactions independently.

It means the AI agent, owned by OpenAI, will be capable of recommending products for purchase and completing transactions on the user’s behalf, potentially at any vendor that accepts Visa.

Previous attempts to integrate its payment network into an AI platform have been limited to a single merchant or a set of enrolled participants.

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While it may not be OpenAI’s first foray into the e-commerce space, the integration follows a wobbly step into the arena.

Last year, the company announced Instant Checkout, which allowed ChatGPT to act as a personal shopper by combing the internet for specific items. The process was error-prone and not widely adopted by merchants due to fees set by the tech company.

Instant Checkout was scrapped in March.

The company’s latest iteration differs in that it will allow users to link their Visa cards directly to ChatGPT for shopping, aiming to streamline payments between merchants and AI agents.

OpenAI will provide the technology that allows agents to interact, make decisions and initiate purchases through ChatGPT. Visa, the world’s largest payment network outside of China, will provide the payment authorization and fraud monitoring needed to operate the infrastructure at scale.

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“As AI agents become active participants in the economy, Visa’s focus is to ensure transactions are trusted, secure and seamless,” Jack Forestell, chief product and strategy officer at Visa, told The Associated Press in a statement.

At a company event on Wednesday, Forestell illustrated how the purchase process would work by showing a ChatGPT user asking it to find a pair of wireless headphones for less than $150. The bot would locate and purchase the item based on those instructions.

“I think we’re generally at a place where most people are very comfortable with the shopping aspects of it and have discovered this as a superior discovery experience,” Forestell said in an interview.

But, he added, making the leap from having AI agents recommend what to buy to doing the purchasing “just requires a whole different level of trust.”

“But that all comes from the underlying infrastructure, the process, the security that we build into it and the rules,” he continued.

OpenAI has not said how much merchants or customers will be charged to use the service, nor has it outlined the broader financial terms of the collaboration.

The now-obsolete Instant Checkout charged merchants four per cent of the transaction’s value.

Third parties, including banks and retailers, have voiced concerns about the AI agent potentially overspending, purchasing the wrong item or receiving customer complaints for transactions they didn’t authorize.

Banks have also raised alarm bells over the possibility of fraud claims when the AI bot uses a bank customer’s credit or debit card.

Visa says the feature will include built-in spending limits and mandatory approval procedures, and that the agent will only be permitted to use customers’ cards at merchants approved by OpenAI.

Forestell acknowledged that it will take time to build consumer trust and said that during its beta stage, the automated payment system will incorporate human oversight and notifications that customers must approve for a transaction to proceed.

He also said Visa will handle disputes following the same fundamental rules it uses for any other transaction: Did the consumer really intend to make the purchase and did the merchant process it correctly? Where it might change, he added, is if both the consumer intent and the merchant processing were done the right way, but “something happened in the middle that caused a problem.”

“And that’s why we’re modifying our whole token framework and data capture process with Visa Intelligent Commerce to make sure that problem doesn’t happen,” Forestell said.

Visa’s closest competitor, Mastercard, has introduced integrated AI shopping features on a smaller scale and in a different vein, focusing on business services rather than purchasing options for individual users.

For example, if a coffee shop wants to launch an advertising campaign, it can authorize an AI agent to purchase services from digital ad providers to build out the campaign.

Global News asked Visa whether users will be able to opt out of integrated payment features, but did not receive a response.

— with files from The Associated Press

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