Perplexity partners with PayPal to offer in-chat payments as AI-driven agentic commerce surges, as per a CNBC report.
Perplexity AI’s new integration with PayPal marks a significant shift in the e-commerce industry, as generative AI platforms increasingly double as digital storefronts.
The company announced it will allow users in the United States to make purchases directly in chat, covering everything from travel to concert tickets.
This push comes as the sector braces for the rise of agentic commerce — a new frontier where AI agents not only assist users with product discovery but also complete transactions on their behalf.
The move signals mounting competition with OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic in the AI commerce space.
AI agents are transforming online shopping behaviour
Perplexity began exploring shopping integrations in 2023, initially targeting paid US users with links to external vendors.
The latest upgrade shifts the entire buying experience into chat itself.
Payments will be processed within the conversation via PayPal or Venmo, which will also manage shipping, tracking, invoicing, and post-purchase support.
This aligns with PayPal’s broader strategy to compete with Stripe, Visa, and Mastercard in embedding AI into digital commerce.
The payment provider has developed a toolkit enabling other platforms to build AI-native shopping experiences with secure, embedded transactions.
Perplexity’s rollout leverages these tools, enabling purchases to be completed with a single click using passkey authentication.
Major payment firms race to dominate agentic commerce
Visa, Mastercard, and PayPal all launched AI initiatives in April, revealing a coordinated industry shift towards agentic commerce.
Visa introduced Intelligent Commerce, a tool allowing AI agents to tokenise credentials and execute purchases securely.
Mastercard launched Agent Pay in partnership with Microsoft’s Azure OpenAI Service and Copilot Studio, aiming to simplify complex commercial transactions through automation.
Meanwhile, PayPal’s own solution focuses on user trust, allowing buyers and sellers to be verified through its wallet and embedded merchant systems.
This makes it easier for customers to complete a transaction without repeatedly entering their payment or shipping details — a critical advantage for AI-led shopping experiences.
According to PayPal’s technology chief Srini Venkatesan, these systems are designed to eliminate friction while maintaining the trust required for autonomous payments.
The company claims its platform already supports secure merchant onboarding, fulfilment, and support — a full-stack approach that makes it viable for real-time AI commerce.
Perplexity eyes retail expansion as valuation hits $14B
Perplexity’s latest push into e-commerce comes amid reports it is finalising a $500 million funding round at a $14 billion valuation, down from its earlier $18 billion target.
The funding round underscores investor interest in platforms that blend search, decision-making, and transactional capabilities into a single interface.
While OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s AI Overviews have taken early leads in search-based AI experiences, Perplexity is carving a niche through commerce integrations.
Unlike ChatGPT, which has yet to offer in-chat transaction functionality, Perplexity’s new partnership with PayPal enables a full purchase flow — from product discovery to checkout — within the chat window.
The company’s business head Ryan Foutty described this as a step toward making AI “better and easier for people — wherever they are and however they prefer to make decisions.”
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