Beyond ChatGPT Checkout: Comparing Google, Perplexity, and Amazon
Who will be your personal shopping companion is the next big play
(Read our overview of ChatGPT’s recent announcement here)
When OpenAI announced Instant Checkout, it wasn’t the only company moving on this front. In the last two months, Google, Perplexity, and Amazon have all shown their cards. The differences matter.
Google: building the pipes
Google’s move is the Agent Payments Protocol (AP2). Unlike OpenAI, which jumped straight to showing buyers a checkout button, Google is working on the infrastructure.
AP2 is an open protocol for agent-led payments, designed to work across cards, banks, and even stablecoins.
More than 60 partners are on board already—payments networks, merchants, processors.
The goal is to become the default fabric for transactions whenever an AI agent needs to pay.
At the same time, Google is pulling “AI Mode” into Chrome and Search. Discovery, comparison, and decision-making still happen inside Google’s surfaces, but AP2 ensures that when an action happens, it’s trusted and portable.
Difference from OpenAI: Google isn’t yet making checkout happen inside Search. They’re setting the rules of the road so any agent can transact safely. OpenAI is the first to make the consumer-facing demo work.
Perplexity: answers that act
Perplexity has been experimenting with checkout inside answers. Ask about a product, and you may see a buy button powered by PayPal or Venmo. Ask about travel, and you may see booking options.
This positions Perplexity as an answer + action layer. The answer is no longer the end of the journey; it’s the place where the action starts.
Difference from OpenAI: Perplexity doesn’t have the scale of ChatGPT, but it’s showing how “actionable answers” might look across categories. It feels like a test bed for blending information and commerce.
Amazon: fortifying the walls
Amazon hasn’t talked about open protocols or checkout in other agents. Instead, it has:
Upgraded Alexa with new “Alexa+” capabilities.
Rolled out smarter seller agents to automate merchant tasks inside its marketplace.
The strategy is clear: keep shoppers and sellers inside Amazon’s ecosystem. Instead of joining a neutral protocol or exposing its catalog to outside agents, Amazon doubles down on control.
Difference from OpenAI: Amazon doesn’t want to collapse discovery and purchase outside its platform. It wants to strengthen its own closed loop.
Why these differences matter
OpenAI is creating a new channel, turning ChatGPT into a storefront with an open-source standard underneath.
Google is building the standards others will have to use, aiming to control the rails more than the storefront.
Perplexity is testing the UX of “answers that act,” without yet solving scale.
Amazon is closing its walls tighter, betting on control instead of interoperability.
For marketers and business owners, this means there won’t be a single model. In one environment, you’ll transact directly in the chat. In another, you’ll still drive to your site but through new protocols. In another, you may never see the buyer unless you’re inside Amazon.