Perplexity Integrates PayPal and Venmo to Enable In-Chat AI Shopping

Perplexity is partnering with PayPal to enable in-chat shopping, allowing users to buy products, book travel, or purchase tickets directly through its conversational AI platform. The new feature, launching this summer in the U.S. for Perplexity Pro users, will support checkout via PayPal or Venmo within a single query or click.

The integration aims to make "agentic commerce" a reality—where intelligent assistants don’t just provide information, but handle transactions end-to-end.

“Perplexity wants to have accurate, trustworthy answers wherever people are making decisions. PayPal is a natural partner because we share a vision for how important trust is in the age of AI,” said Aravind Srinivas, Cofounder and CEO of Perplexity.

“We’re making it easy and secure to shop right in the chat when inspiration strikes,” added Alex Chriss, President and CEO of PayPal. “It’s a powerful step in making conversational commerce a reality.”

How It Works

The full shopping experience—including payment, shipping, tracking, and invoicing—will be managed behind the scenes using PayPal’s secure infrastructure. That includes account linking, tokenized wallets, and support for passkey-based checkouts, which could replace passwords with faster, more seamless authentication.

Key Features

• Agentic Commerce: Users can purchase products and services directly within Perplexity's AI chat interface.

• Global Reach: Access for PayPal’s 430+ million active accounts across nearly 200 markets.

• Secure Transactions: Built on PayPal’s fraud detection and data security tools.

The platform is designed to support everyday decisions—whether users are comparing products, planning trips, or researching topics—by turning natural language questions into trustworthy, useful results.

What This Means

This partnership marks a pivotal step in the evolution of AI from a tool for answers to a platform for action. By integrating PayPal directly into Perplexity’s chat interface, the companies are introducing transactional capabilities into a large language model-based system—something that, until now, has largely remained separate from commercial infrastructure.

For the first time, users won’t just ask an AI where to find something—they’ll be able to buy it in the same conversation. This move compresses the entire commerce journey into a single interface, powered by natural language. It’s a shift that could redefine how people interact with both shopping platforms and AI.

For businesses, it opens the door to embedding commerce directly into decision-making moments. For users, it could make research and purchasing feel like one continuous process—not two separate tasks. And for the tech industry, it signals that the future of AI may be as much about what these systems can do as what they can say.

By fusing intelligent recommendations with real-world purchasing power, Perplexity and PayPal are turning AI into a new kind of marketplace—one where action follows intent in real time.

Editor’s Note: This article was created by Alicia Shapiro, CMO of AiNews.com, with writing, image, and idea-generation support from ChatGPT, an AI assistant. However, the final perspective and editorial choices are solely Alicia Shapiro’s. Special thanks to ChatGPT for assistance with research and editorial support in crafting this article.