Meta’s Muse has been around for a month now, and its rise in that time has been meteoric, hitting five million downloads in its first 22 days. Muse is built to understand the goals of each of its users and to perform tasks on their behalf – and that includes paying for items. It has integrated Stripe’s Link payment system, including one-time-use card functionality for eligible transactions, with Shop Pay support also on the cards.

Not to be outdone, OpenAI has announced the launch of its rival Dots agent, which performs similar functionality – and there are signs that it is preparing a payment product called ChatGPT wallet, which would let users store payment cards for use while carrying out tasks.

OpenAI has already experimented with functionality enabling users to buy directly from merchants in ChatGPT; Instant Checkout lasted just a few months before the company quietly dropped it in March, stating that it did not “offer the level of flexibility that we aspire to provide”. The key difference with the latest approach to AI shopping is that these agents do not seek to replace retailers’ checkout journeys. Instead, they act as intermediaries, carrying out purchases on users’ behalf while transactions are still completed through merchant payment rails.

So, does this new approach mean that AI shopping is finally ready to scale?

Chris Jobes, Managing Director at expert payments consultancy PSE Consulting , remains unconvinced, warning that agent providers becoming “online wallets” that sit between consumers and merchants with whom they have no established relationship increases risk for both merchant and customer.

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