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ZDNET’s key takeaways
- PayPal announced an agentic commerce services suite.
- This includes a new agentic payment solution called agent ready.
- The new store sync aims to help merchants fuel agentic commerce.
To prepare for a future in which AI can make purchases on your behalf, companies are laying the groundwork for agentic transactions, and PayPal is the latest to join the effort.
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On Tuesday, the company launched its agent commerce services, a suite of solutions designed for merchants to enable AI-driven shopping experiences that build on PayPal’s existing payment infrastructure. The suite includes an agentic payment solution that aims to make it easier for merchants to accept payments through AI interfaces, as well as a catalog and order management offering that fuels new AI experiences.
What agent ready offers
PayPal’s agentic payments solution, called agent ready, allows existing PayPal merchants to accept payments via AI tools like conversational chatbots or AI browsers. The company said that agent ready will enable fraud detection, buyer protection, and dispute resolution – with no additional lift from the merchant required.
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Ultimately, agent ready is designed to make it as easy as possible for merchants to enable transactions on many of the new shopping experiences emerging from existing AI tools. It will become available in early 2026, according to the post.
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“Merchants will gain access to new ways to become discoverable while offering payment flexibility, built on the latest PayPal checkout configurations,” said the company in the release.
For example, OpenAI has been exploring AI shopping this year with products such as Instant Checkout, which enables users to make purchases directly within ChatGPT. In May, Google announced a feature that would allow Gemini to place an order on a user’s behalf once the price drops to a certain amount designated by the user.
Although this feature has not yet been implemented, it helps paint a clear picture of the direction e-commerce is heading: AI is opening up a new avenue for connecting consumers to the products they need from merchants.
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A recent survey commissioned by PayPal found that 40% of US consumers have used AI to help with purchases in the past year, and 43% say they expect to this holiday season. Similarly, Adobe Analytics data found that consumers are turning to AI as a trusted shopping assistant. Of the respondents, 39% have used generative AI for online shopping, while most of the respondents (53%) intend to use AI for online shopping this year.
PayPal store sync
PayPal also introduced store sync, a tool designed to help merchants streamline their backend operations and take advantage of AI solutions. Store sync helps merchants connect their product catalogs, including data, inventory, and fulfillment, and connect them with AI checkout experiences.
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For example, via store sync, PayPal said merchants’ product catalogs can now be easily discoverable and purchasable through integrations with partners, which at the moment include Wix, Cymbio, Commerce (BigCommerce & Feedonomics), and Shopware.
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Another advantage is that, through a single PayPal integration, merchants will be able to opt into appearing on multiple AI platforms. This will include Perplexity before the end of the year and the shopping agent experience in the PayPal app, which the company is currently testing.
Existing PayPal merchants can sign up on the PayPal.ai page, and enrollment in store sync will be available soon.
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