OpenAI’s agents can now pay with your card. United Airlines and Amazon are already shutting the door on them

OpenAI announced ChatGPT Wallet on Friday, US time. A user adds a card once, asks their dot, one of the AI agents OpenAI unveiled at its developer conference in late September, to find something, then reviews the item and total and confirms with Face ID or a fingerprint scan. The dot completes the purchase and keeps a record.

The card details the dot uses are not the user’s. American Express, Mastercard and Visa, OpenAI’s partners, give it a token for a single transaction, with its own scoped card number, security code and expiry date. OpenAI says card rewards and protections for eligible disputes are unaffected.

Who can use it?

Only ChatGPT Pro subscribers aged 18 and over in the United States, with eligible US-issued cards. OpenAI has not said when it will reach other countries, including Australia.

The narrow start is deliberate. American Express’s Luke Gebb said it made sense to “start it in a contained environment” and expand from there. Chaya Nayak, OpenAI’s head of monetisation and payments product, said the company’s focus was on “merchants and our network partners”.

Why does this matter beyond the US?

Because it is the first time the company behind ChatGPT has let its agents spend money directly, and the card networks have built the plumbing with it. ChatGPT has more than 1.2 billion weekly users and nearly 100 million paying subscribers, which is the scale at which online shopping habits change.

It is also a second attempt. OpenAI launched an “Instant Checkout” feature in late 2025 and later abandoned it, moving to a shopping experience focused on finding products by March 2026. This time the purchase sits with the agent rather than in a checkout page.

Who is saying no?

Plenty of the places people actually shop. United Airlines says it will block agents from booking tickets through its systems, including through travel agencies and aggregators. Amazon blocks AI agents from buying on its platform, and has blocked Meta’s Muse agent; a court order has also stopped Perplexity’s shopping agent from buying there.

OpenAI has published a guide for businesses, including how to make sure their websites do not block its agents by accident and how payment and fraud systems can recognise legitimate purchases made by an AI.

What should shoppers watch?

The step OpenAI says comes next: letting agents buy within limits, such as a spending cap, a category of goods or a set period, without asking each time. That is where convenience meets risk: without a check on each purchase, an agent that misreads a request would be spending real money before its owner looks. OpenAI says that step will come with stronger safeguards.

For now, the fingerprint on every purchase is the safeguard, and the token means a breach would not hand over the card itself.