Perplexity is deepening its focus on chat-driven shopping to differentiate itself in the competitive generative AI space alongside OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google. On Wednesday, the company announced a partnership with PayPal enabling users to make purchases directly within chat. Soon, U. S. customers can book travel, buy products, and secure concert tickets without leaving Perplexity’s platform. Payments will be completed within chat using PayPal or Venmo, with PayPal managing processing, shipping, tracking, and invoicing. Checkout will be simplified via PayPal’s passkey system, allowing one-click purchases. Ryan Foutty, Perplexity’s VP of business, emphasized their goal to be present wherever users ask questions and make decisions, envisioning assistive AI that enhances user experience seamlessly across platforms and preferences. Perplexity entered e-commerce last year by adding shopping features for paying U. S. users and integrating with sellers via platforms like Shopify. Now, it further innovates by enabling full transactions inside chat—a capability ChatGPT has yet to offer. PayPal joins other major payment players such as Stripe, Visa, and Mastercard in competing for AI integration deals.

In April, Visa, Mastercard, and PayPal rolled out new AI-driven commerce tools. Visa launched Intelligent Commerce, allowing AI to choose products and securely pay using tokenized credentials, partnering with firms including Anthropic, Microsoft, OpenAI, and Perplexity. Mastercard introduced Agent Pay, combining Microsoft’s AI technologies with its payment solutions to develop “agentic commerce” that automates the entire commerce value chain, with plans to collaborate with other AI platforms. PayPal released a developer toolkit to embed its payment features into AI-powered shopping experiences. This trio of announcements reflects a broader industry shift toward using AI agents that manage everything from product discovery to purchase completion. PayPal’s CTO Srini Venkatesan highlighted that PayPal’s system directly connects with merchants to handle payments, shipping, and billing without users having to re-enter information, also managing customer support. He noted that agentic commerce involves AI agents researching, shopping, paying, and completing purchases autonomously—an area where PayPal aims to lead. PayPal’s competitive edge lies in securely verifying both buyers and sellers, automatically authenticating users through their wallet and filling billing and shipping details to minimize friction. Venkatesan stressed, “We provide the trust that the business is legitimate on one side, and then the customer is legitimate on the other side. ” This partnership occurs as Perplexity nears the close of a $500 million funding round at a $14 billion valuation, down from an earlier target of $18 billion. AI-driven chat use for customer service surged 42% over the past year, per Salesforce data from 1. 6 trillion platform page views. While buying decisions influenced by AI chat grew 6%, global AI-influenced sales rose from $199 billion to $229 billion year-over-year between November and December. Leading AI chat tools like ChatGPT, Anthropic’s Claude, and Google’s AI Overviews have advanced in search by offering real-time, AI-enhanced answers. OpenAI’s ChatGPT search, launched last year, competes directly with Perplexity, while Google’s AI Overviews provide real-time insights. WATCH: Perplexity CEO on AI race