ChatGPT wants your credit card. On Friday, OpenAI announced ChatGPT Wallet, a new feature that will allow the company’s AI agent “dots” to make purchases on a user’s behalf—which is something that neither businesses nor consumers seem particularly excited about.
According to OpenAI, ChatGPT Wallet was made in partnership with American Express, Mastercard, and Visa and will set “a new bar for secure payments by agents.” The feature will let users add a card to their wallet, enabling their agent to make purchases on their behalf without requiring them to re-enter payment details.
Users will still have to approve each purchase, including reviewing each item and making sure the correct card was selected, and then complete a security check, such as Face ID or a fingerprint scan, to authorize the payment. Once approved, the payment network creates a payment token that allows the transaction to go through without sharing the specific card details with the business or the agent. The company also said that users will keep their card’s existing rewards and protections.
If that sounds to you like pretty much every other digital payment method out there, well… yeah, you’re not wrong. Tokenization is the default these days for digital payment tools like Apple Wallet or Google Wallet. And those services also let you earn rewards and keep card protections (which, why wouldn’t they? You’re literally using the card). So those aren’t so much features or selling points as much as they are just how digital wallets work.
The unique part, it seems, is still to come. According to OpenAI, the plan is for users “to be able to delegate purchases entirely to their agent by setting clear parameters—such as spending limits, purchase categories, or time periods—and pre-approve those purchases with enhanced safeguards that build on today’s protections, including biometric checks and clear records of authorization.”
And while the agents won’t have access to your actual credit card number, OpenAI will still be collecting plenty of information about your spending habits. According to the company’s privacy notice, Wallet will collect detailed records of purchases, including merchants, items, prices, and shipping information. OpenAI says it won’t sell that information or share it for targeted advertising, but it will certainly have a new window into what its users are buying.
Question is, is anyone particularly raring to hand their card over to an AI agent? Kinda seems like no. In the last few weeks, multiple companies have revealed they’re getting next to no orders from AI agents. Uber said just four rides and 500 Uber Eats orders were placed by agents during the last week of October, out of roughly 320 million rides and deliveries. DoorDash’s CEO reported they’ve gotten “maybe several hundred orders in total” from the AI assistants. Airbnb reported getting a “very non-material” number of bookings from the AI services.
An American Bankers Association survey published last month found that 77% of people surveyed expressed concern about giving an AI agent or tool permission to make payments or carry out financial transactions on their behalf, and 61% said they were unlikely to let an AI agent autonomously manage their bank account balances in the next 12 months.
ChatGPT Wallet is initially rolling out to a limited number of ChatGPT Pro users in the U.S., who already pay at least $100 a month for the service and are probably more inclined to adopt the feature. It seems there’s going to be a lot more trust to establish before it gains traction outside of that audience.
