Win the intent or lose the sale.

Why

Commerce follows intent. On 29 September 2025 OpenAI switched on Instant Checkout, so a shopper can ask ChatGPT for ideas and complete a purchase in the same thread. Orders for Shopify merchants still land in Shopify, with the merchant keeping the customer relationship. In practical terms the search, the choice and the payment sit inside one exchange. High intent moves upstream into agents.

The plumbing behind this is hardening. Google’s Agent Payments Protocol gives agents, payment rails and merchants a shared, trusted language. Protocols feel dull until they decide who plugs into whom; this one removes friction and vendor lock in, the sort of quiet change that shifts markets. Running alongside sits Amazon’s Rufus, launched in the UK in August, which keeps the agent and the inventory under one roof. Think of AP2 as the plug socket standard and Rufus as the house with everything built in. Together they set the terms of participation.

What

We are not simply moving checkout earlier. We are bringing the moment of recommendation into the same breath as payment. That rewires where discovery happens, how ranking earns trust and who owns the relationship.

First, discovery becomes dialogic rather than page led. Agents do not browse your homepage; they read your product truth. Clean titles, precise attributes, live availability and straightforward policies stop being back-office admin and become front-of-house persuasion. If your facts are legible and current, you are present at the moment of intent. If they are messy, you are not invited.

Second, ranking signals tilt toward service credibility. The current story is relevance. The working reality quickly becomes a blend where fulfilment reliability, returns outcomes and satisfaction sit alongside price. Operational excellence behaves like media because it buys visibility inside agents. The new shelf space looks less like ad slots and more like a reward for being consistently good.

Third, the relationship line redraws. Orders initiated inside ChatGPT can still belong to the merchant if the platform pushes the data back into the shop system. That is not how every marketplace behaves today. It matters because lifetime value compounds only when you keep the relationship you have just won.

There is a useful way to name the shift. As FutureWeek’s conversation with Benjamin Wiener puts it, we are entering an omnibuyer world. Sometimes you speak to a person. Sometimes you speak to their agent. Either way, your product data is the dialogue. Make it legible and live and you surface when intent appears.

Where

When the concierge can also take payment, power gathers in familiar yet newly measurable places. Trustable facts become a moat because they reduce returns and improve placement. Post-purchase excellence travels back into rankings, so delivery accuracy and clear remedies become discoverability signals, not just cost centres. Differentiation matters again because agents flatten the comparison layer. If everything reads the same, nothing stands out; clarity of proposition becomes a retrieval advantage as well as a brand virtue.

The weak points are just as clear. Leaky web journeys feel anachronistic next to a one-touch alternative. Opaque delivery or returns bury a sharp price in agent results. And if the catalogue cannot be parsed quickly, your story never gets told. In a world where answers are assembled, a brand that whispers is edited out.

The competitive picture

Two models are likely to run in parallel. The open route, AP2, invites many builders and spreads good ideas quickly. The owned route, Rufus, trades openness for speed and tightly integrated defaults. Neither kills the other. They set different terms. Brands should be legible to both, because customers move between them without ceremony.

Strategy, not a checklist

This moment does not ask for a thousand tasks. It asks for three strategic moves that match how buying now works.

The first is to invest in product truth as if it were creative. Titles, attributes, availability, prices, delivery windows and returns windows decide whether you appear at all. Treat them with the same care you would give a hero image. If agents quote sentences, write sentences worth quoting. If agents compare attributes, make yours precise and comparable. This is craft, not clerical work.

The second is to choose your instant catalogue by intent, not convenience. Low-consideration purchases belong inside the agent because the decision is quick and friction matters. Think refills and run-outs like toothpaste, toner cartridges and coffee pods; impulse gifts under fifty pounds; simple apparel rebuys like socks and gym tees. High-consideration ranges still deserve immersive environments where story, comparison and reassurance do their work. You are not abandoning your site. You are reserving it for depth that earns its keep.

The third is to guard the relationship. If agent-originated orders are recognised as first party, with consent and preferences captured, discovery can move elsewhere without hollowing out your customer base. That is the long game: win the intent wherever it appears, then bring the relationship home.

Read the road ahead

Three signals reveal the pace and direction.

1. Multi-item carts and international coverage start to appear inside agents, which tells you the ceiling is rising.
2. Ranking models begin to show, even implicitly, how service metrics sit alongside price and relevance, which tells you where to invest for visibility.
3. Fees settle between platforms, payments and merchants in a way that rewards reliability rather than raw volume, which tells you where the margin will live.

If you want a place at the moment of intent, speak agent fluently. That means impeccable product truth, service you would stake your brand on and a relationship you refuse to outsource.