Perplexity, an AI company, has announced a new partnership with PayPal to bring shopping directly into its chat interface. Soon, users in the U.S will be able to book trips, buy products and get concert tickets, all without leaving Perplexity’s platform.
With just a few clicks, customers can pay using PayPal or Venmo while also handling the rest of the process, including shipping, tracking, billing, and customer support.
This move is part of Perplexity’s plan to stand out in the fast-growing AI market, as big names like OpenAI (ChatGPT), Google, and Anthropic (Claude) are already leading in AI-powered search and answers. But Perplexity wants to offer more than just information, it wants to let people shop and pay right inside the chat.
“Our vision for assistive AI is that everything just gets better and easier for people, wherever they are and however they prefer to make decisions,” said Ryan Foutty, the company’s VP of business.
PayPal’s Bet on AI Shopping
For Paypal, this partnership is a chance to get ahead in the growing field of AI-powered commerce while competing with Stripe, Visa, and Mastercard, who are all working on ways to connect AI with online payments.
In fact, Visa and Mastermind recently launched their own AI-powered tools that allow AI agents to help users find products and complete purchases securely. Paypal too, has created a developer toolkit to let businesses add PayPal payments into AI shopping experiences.
The next generation of commerce is happening on the agentic side, said Srini Venkatesan, PayPal’s technology chief. AI will not only help you search for things but also buy them, pay for them, and track your orders, all in one place.
This partnership comes at a time when AI chatbots are playing a bigger role in shopping and customer service. According to Salesforce data, the use of AI chat for customer support jumped 42% in the past year, as AI-influenced sales during the holiday season reached $229 billion, up from $199 billion the year before.
Perplexity is also in the middle of raising $500 million in new funding, valuing the company at $14 billion, though it is slightly below its earlier goal of $18 billion.
