san francisco — Payments giant Visa said on Wednesday that it has embedded its payment network within ChatGPT, enabling the chatbot to do just that. Shop independently and complete transactions On behalf of its user.
This means that AI agents can’t just do that Recommend products But complete the purchase on the user’s behalf, at any merchant that accepts Visa. The payment network’s previous attempts to make this technological leap were limited to a single retailer or a small group of registered merchants.
not so OpenAI First attempt at e-commerce. Late last year, the company announced an instant checkout feature, which allowed ChatGPT to search the Internet for a specific item like a digital personal shopper. But the process was prone to errors and was not widely adopted by merchants due to the fees that OpenAI was charging merchants. The company retired its instant payment service in March.
The Visa collaboration differs from previous OpenAI attempts, as it will allow users to link their Visa cards to ChatGPT for shopping and make it easier for merchants to accept agent-initiated transactions.
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 China, will provide the payment licensing and fraud monitoring needed to do this at scale.
“As AI agents become active participants in the economy, Visa’s focus is on ensuring transactions are reliable, secure and seamless,” said Jack Forrestle, chief product and strategy officer at Visa.
Speaking at a company event on Wednesday in San Francisco on Wednesday, Forestell gave an example of a customer who told ChatGPT they were looking for a pair of wireless headphones for under $150. The chatbot will find a pair for sale according to these criteria and buy it on behalf of the customer.
Visa and OpenAI did not disclose the financial terms of the collaboration and did not provide details on the fees that merchants or customers will have to pay.
Instant Checkout charged merchants 4% of the transaction value, which merchants considered too expensive.
Allowing AI agents to purchase products on behalf of the consumer raises concerns for both banks and retailers. The customer may overspend, the agent buys the wrong item, or the customer claims they did not authorize the transaction. Banks were concerned about potential fraud claims that might occur when an agent used a bank customer’s credit or debit card.
Visa says the feature will have guardrails such as spending limits, required approval steps, and approved merchants to shop in order to protect consumers and reduce fraud.
Retailers have provided AI-powered shopping assistants It can recommend products and personalize a customer’s shopping experience, and the first iterations of those experiences were Amazon’s Alexa. But Alexa could only shop on Amazon, and OpenAI’s instant checkout feature was limited to specific merchants.
Visa’s biggest competitor, Mastercard, has also introduced its AI shopping features to its payment network on a smaller scale.
Mastercard announced that artificial intelligence agents will have the ability to purchase services on behalf of the company. For example, a café wants to run an ad campaign as part of the launch process, so it gives the AI agent permission to purchase services from web and ad providers so the café can build its campaign.
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Sweet reported from New York.