Microsoft has launched Copilot Checkout, enabling users to complete purchases directly inside the AI assistant without being redirected to a retailer's website (Microsoft). Stripe is one of the payment partners powering the experience, alongside PayPal and Shopify. The feature is rolling out in the US now, with Urban Outfitters, Anthropologie, Ashley Furniture, and Etsy sellers among the first merchants to offer it.
How the Embedded Checkout Works
When a Copilot conversation leads to shopping, a Stripe-powered checkout appears natively in the chat. Stripe connects with the seller via the Agentic Commerce Protocol, an open standard codeveloped with OpenAI. After the buyer provides payment credentials, Stripe issues a Shared Payment Token that lets the AI agent initiate payment without exposing the underlying card details. The seller remains the merchant of record and can even use a different payment processor while still benefiting from Stripe's fraud signals.
Stripe's Agentic Commerce Play
This is part of Stripe's broader push to become the infrastructure layer for AI-driven commerce. The company co-developed the Agentic Commerce Protocol with OpenAI and recently launched the Agentic Commerce Suite, a low-code solution that lets merchants sell across multiple AI agents with a single integration. Beyond Microsoft, Stripe is working with Anthropic, Perplexity, Vercel, and others to embed payments into AI surfaces.
A New Distribution Channel for Commerce
AI assistants are becoming storefronts, and payments need to be embedded directly into these surfaces. Microsoft joins OpenAI in building checkout into chat, and others will follow. For merchants, this is another channel to integrate. For payment providers like Stripe, being the infrastructure behind AI commerce could become as important as powering traditional e-commerce checkout.
