The rise of AI is rewriting the rules of ecommerce. ChatGPT has introduced instant checkout in the U.S., allowing users to buy directly from Etsy sellers inside the chat interface. Soon, over a million Shopify merchants will follow.
It is an early glimpse into a future where discovery, decision, and purchase might all happen in one conversation. But this is still the beginning, not the end of marketplaces.
AI checkout: A new ecommerce frontier
AI checkout represents more than speed; it’s about context. Whether through voice assistants, AR-enabled search, or generative shopping tools, AI removes friction by connecting need and purchase in one step.
Currently, adoption remains narrow. It is available only to U.S. shoppers and mostly through partnerships with established marketplace ecosystems like Etsy and Shopify. Walmart has also partnered with OpenAI, and the payments infrastructure for that collaboration is backed by Stripe. This reinforces a key point: AI isn’t replacing marketplaces - it is being built on top of them.
Niels Floors
Trust: The missing link between AI and shoppers
Despite the hype, there’s still a lot of hesitation around letting AI make purchases. A recent Riskified survey found that while nearly three-quarters of global shoppers already use AI for product research, price comparison, and review summaries, only 13% have allowed AI to complete a purchase for them.
The issue isn’t technical - it is psychological. Shoppers still want visibility, reassurance, and control. They worry about payment security, data privacy, and who’s accountable if something goes wrong.
That said, trust is a moving target. Just as consumers once hesitated to enter credit card details online, their comfort with AI-assisted buying may grow over time as systems prove more transparent and reliable. For now, marketplaces remain the reassuring safety net - the trusted layer between new technology and consumer confidence.
At the same time, brand sentiment has become a new driver of trust. As LLMs learn from public reviews and ratings, a brand’s overall reputation increasingly shapes how (and whether) AI recommends its products. Positive reviews and consistent engagement don’t just convert human shoppers - they help algorithms understand that a brand is reliable and worth promoting.
The marketplace advantage: Trust, structure, and scale
Every large language model today - from ChatGPT to Perplexity - pulls its product information from marketplaces, social commerce channels, and brand websites. That means online marketplaces aren’t just surviving the AI wave; they’re fueling it.
But there’s a catch: if product data is outdated, incomplete, or inconsistent across platforms, AI agents surface misleading results. That’s where the next competitive edge lies - in accurate, synchronized, structured product data.
For brands, that’s a complex challenge. Managing pricing, stock, and content across multiple channels and geographies requires automation - and that’s exactly where marketplace integrators like ChannelEngine come in.
By unifying catalog data, optimizing listings, and providing accurate product information to both marketplaces and AI systems, integrators ensure that brands remain visible and trustworthy, wherever the next checkout occurs.
When AI shops for you, marketplaces still do the heavy lifting
Key Takeaways 💡
- AI checkout is emerging as a new ecommerce frontier, but it is being built on top of existing marketplace and brand ecosystems, not replacing them.
- Marketplaces provide the “source of truth” for AI: offers, availability, seller validation, and structured product data that make autonomous checkout possible.
- Trust remains the biggest barrier to AI-driven purchasing—shoppers still want visibility, control, and reliable intermediaries.
- Brand reputation, ratings, and reviews increasingly shape how AI recommends products, as LLMs learn from public sentiment and performance.
- Marketplace integrators like ChannelEngine help brands unify catalog data, pricing, and stock, keeping products visible and trustworthy wherever AI checkout happens.
- In the long run, ecommerce power will center on who owns the most accurate, trusted, real-time product data—not just who owns the traffic.
AI checkout today relies on marketplace and brand store ecosystems, not on replacing them. LLMs need structured catalogs; shoppers need trust; and brands need reach.
As agentic commerce becomes the new storefront, marketplaces will remain the commerce backbone - the verified, data-rich infrastructure that connects shoppers, sellers, and systems.
The next generation of successful marketplaces will be the brands that lean into this shift: opening APIs, improving data quality, and integrating directly with AI ecosystems to ensure that their catalog data fuels every relevant product recommendation.
Ultimately, the future of ecommerce won’t be about who owns the traffic, but who owns the truth - the accurate, trusted, real-time data that powers every purchase decision. Marketplaces already hold that position. The challenge now is to evolve fast enough to stay essential in the AI-driven economy.
