Agentic commerce
Agentic commerce: should a Gulf grocer sell inside ChatGPT or run its own agent?
What the AI platforms offer merchants today, what is open in Saudi Arabia and the UAE, and what a store's own agent keeps.
In short
Agentic commerce is shopping done by AI agents that find products, fill a basket and sometimes check out for a person. As of 5 November 2026 we found no grocery checkout inside ChatGPT, Gemini or Perplexity for shoppers in Saudi Arabia or the UAE: Google's lists the United States, Canada and Australia, Perplexity's launched in the US, and OpenAI moved checkout back to retailers' own sites in March 2026.
A Gulf grocer can run its own agent today, in its app, on WhatsApp and by phone, and keep its branch prices, halal rules, checkout and data. Hephon Commerce is that kind of agent.
Updated
What is agentic commerce?
Agentic commerce means AI agents doing the shopping work: reading what a person wants, searching catalogs, comparing, filling a basket and, in some setups, completing the purchase. The person stays in charge by approving the result. "Agentic shopping" is the same idea from the shopper's side.
There are two places the agent can live.
- Inside a general AI assistant. ChatGPT, Google's AI Mode and Gemini, or Perplexity. Many stores compete in the same answer, and the platform owns the conversation.
- Inside the store. The retailer's own app, website, WhatsApp number or phone line. One store's catalog, its prices and its rules.
To connect the first kind to merchants, the platforms have published open protocols: OpenAI's Agentic Commerce Protocol and Google's Universal Commerce Protocol. They describe how an agent reads a merchant's products, builds a checkout and hands payment to the merchant.
What can merchants do in ChatGPT, Google and Perplexity today?
Each point below names its source and date. We checked them on 5 November 2026.
ChatGPT: from Instant Checkout to retailer apps
On 29 September 2025 OpenAI announced Instant Checkout and the Agentic Commerce Protocol, built with Stripe. At launch it let shoppers in the United States buy single items from Etsy sellers, with Shopify merchants to follow, and merchants kept orders, payments and fulfilment in their own systems (OpenAI, "Buy it in ChatGPT", 29 September 2025).
In March 2026 OpenAI changed course. CNBC reported that OpenAI was moving away from Instant Checkout and working with retailers on dedicated apps inside ChatGPT, with purchases completed on the retailer's own site; Shopify confirmed checkout would no longer happen natively in ChatGPT (Retail Insight Network, citing CNBC, 23 March 2026). OpenAI also takes merchant applications for ChatGPT shopping at chatgpt.com/merchants, but it has not published eligibility rules or a market-by-market opening date (Lengow guide to the ChatGPT product feed, read 5 November 2026). These are the "ChatGPT merchants" and "sell on ChatGPT" programmes people search for.
Carrefour and Mealz: grocery inside ChatGPT in Europe
Grocery reached ChatGPT through apps. In the United States, Instacart launched an app inside ChatGPT with checkout in the chat for US users (Instacart, 8 December 2025). In Europe, Carrefour did it first. In France, customers can search products, build a basket, get recipe and meal-plan suggestions and choose delivery, but orders must be finalised on Carrefour's website and payment in ChatGPT is not available (Connexion France, 29 March 2026). Carrefour Belgium followed on 25 August 2026 with an assistant built on the Mealz.ai shopping agent and connected to the retailer's catalog, stock and cart, with pickup or home delivery (Mealz, 28 August 2026).
Google: the Universal Commerce Protocol
Google announced the Universal Commerce Protocol in January 2026, with checkout on eligible product listings in AI Mode in Google Search and in the Gemini app (9to5Google, 11 January 2026). Google's merchant help page says the checkout applies to products eligible in the United States, Canada and Australia, and that the merchant stays the merchant of record (Google Merchant Center Help, read 5 November 2026).
Perplexity: Instant Buy with PayPal
Perplexity and PayPal launched Instant Buy, checkout inside Perplexity's chat, for US shoppers in November 2025 (PYMNTS, 25 November 2025). We found no report of it opening in the Gulf.
What is available in Saudi Arabia and the UAE today?
For grocery checkout inside a general AI assistant, nothing that we could find. As of 5 November 2026, none of the sources above lists Saudi Arabia or the UAE, and we found no Gulf grocer with an app inside ChatGPT.
Apps inside ChatGPT do reach Gulf users in other categories. Almosafer, a Riyadh-based travel company, launched a ChatGPT app in Arabic and English for hotel search in April 2026 (Skift, 13 April 2026). So a Gulf retailer could build a ChatGPT app in principle; what is missing is checkout and a grocery precedent in the region.
This will change, and the dates above will age. Treat this page as a snapshot with a date on it, and check the platforms' own merchant pages before you plan around them.
Sell inside ChatGPT, or run your own agent?
They do different jobs. One brings new shoppers; the other serves the ones you have.
| Selling inside ChatGPT, Gemini or Perplexity | Running your own agent (app, WhatsApp, phone) | |
|---|---|---|
| Available to Saudi and UAE grocers today | Not that we found, as of 5 November 2026 | Yes |
| Who reaches the shopper | The AI platform, among other retailers' offers | You, with shoppers who already chose your store |
| Prices and stock | From a feed or an app you build for the platform | Your live catalog, per branch |
| Halal and other content rules | Whatever your feed and app enforce | Enforced by the server before the agent sees the catalog |
| Checkout | The platform's checkout or a link to yours, depending on the programme | Your checkout, confirmed by the shopper |
| Conversation data | Held by the platform under its own terms | Yours, in your inbox, never used to train a model |
| Language | The platform's general model | Gulf, Saudi and Lebanese Arabic, Arabizi, English, French, with a phrasebook you approve |
| Strength | Reach: shoppers who have not found you yet | Repeat orders from your own customers |
A general AI assistant is a discovery channel. Its strength is reach: someone who has never opened your app can be shown your products. For grocery that matters less than for fashion or electronics, because most grocery orders are repeat orders from people who already have a favourite store and a delivery address with it.
Those shoppers are already in your app and on your WhatsApp. An agent there lets them order the way they talk: a list in one message, "kabsa for 10", "cheapest rice", a voice note in Saudi Arabic, a phone call. It answers from your catalog alone, with the prices of the branch that will deliver.
What does your own agent keep?
The details a general assistant does not have, and the ones you should not hand over.
- 1
Branch prices and stock
The shopper sees what their branch can deliver, at that branch's price, in your currency.
- 2
Your content rules
Alcohol, pork and tobacco hidden by the server on every channel, failing closed.
- 3
Your checkout
Orders go to your platform or your team, and only after the shopper confirms.
- 4
Your data
Conversations stay in your inbox, and none is used to train an AI model.
Grocery runs on details: a 1 L carton or a 2 L one, the price at the branch in Jeddah rather than Riyadh, what is in stock in this dark store this hour, a store that never sells pork. A general assistant sees a feed; your own agent sees the live catalog per branch and your rules, enforced on the server before the model sees a product.
It also keeps the relationship. Every conversation lands in your inbox, your team can take over any chat, and the shopper pays through your checkout. With Hephon Commerce no order is placed without the shopper's explicit confirmation, and no conversation is ever used to train an AI model.
How to prepare for both
The same groundwork serves your own agent and any AI platform that opens later:
- Clean product data. Names, brands, sizes and pack counts in structured fields, in Arabic and English.
- Prices and stock per branch. Agents can only promise what a branch can deliver.
- A product feed or API. Hephon Commerce reads Shopify, WooCommerce, product feeds including the Google product feed format and JSON lines, and custom connectors. The platforms ask for feeds too.
- Clear rules. Which products you never sell, when a person takes over, how substitutions work.
- A checkout that can take a prepared basket. An API or order ticket your team already handles.
What Hephon Commerce does not do
- It does not list your products in ChatGPT, Gemini or Perplexity, and it does not implement the Agentic Commerce Protocol or the Universal Commerce Protocol today.
- It does not bring you new shoppers from AI platforms. It serves shoppers who reach you in your app, on WhatsApp and by phone.
- It does not take payment on its own. Checkout is yours, and the shopper confirms every order.
- It is not open for self-serve sign-up. Access is by invitation, after a demo on your catalog.
Agentic commerce, answered.
See it on your own catalog.
We set up a demo with your products, your branches and your shoppers' languages.
