After Opening Ad Placements, ChatGPT to Charge a 4% Commission for On-Platform Transactions

【Ebrun Original】Recently, according to foreign media reports, starting January 26, Shopify merchants will need to pay an additional 4% transaction commission to ChatGPT for purchases completed using ChatGPT's in-platform checkout function.

It is understood that this transaction commission currently only applies to transactions finalized directly within the platform. If users click a link provided by ChatGPT and complete the purchase on the merchant's independent website, ChatGPT will not charge this extra fee.

This move follows OpenAI's earlier announcement of opening advertising placements, marking another step in ChatGPT's commercialization as it accelerates its transformation into an e-commerce platform for the AI era.

Market research firm Marketplace Pulse stated that compared to Amazon's 15% referral fee, Walmart's 6%-15%, and TikTok Shop's approximately 8% rate, ChatGPT's fee is highly competitive even when including Shopify's own 2.9% payment processing fee.

It is worth noting that in shelf-based e-commerce, represented by Amazon, search rankings within the platform are strongly tied to advertising spend, but ChatGPT does not require mandatory ad expenditures.

In its previous statement regarding opening advertising business, OpenAI indicated that ChatGPT's original responses will always be based on objective and useful information and will not be influenced by ads. If the system determines that the consumer's current conversation has relevant sponsored products or services, ads will be displayed at the bottom of ChatGPT's response. Ads will be clearly labeled and presented separately from the response content. In other words, ChatGPT's product recommendation logic remains relatively independent, with a large amount of user-approved content still based on the original GEO logic.

Many platforms have already noticed the contribution of AI recommendations to website traffic. A platform called Northbeam reported that AI's contribution to its website visits increased from 0.01% to 0.15%. Although the absolute value remains relatively small, consumer adoption rates of AI-generated recommendations are gradually rising.

Marketplace Pulse also claimed that a study by OpenAI last year showed that 2.1% of ChatGPT conversations are shopping-related. Based on this, it is estimated that ChatGPT will have 4 billion product-related conversations annually. Assuming a product conversion rate of 2% and an average order value of $70, this could generate billions of dollars in GMV.

Whether in terms of commercialization scale or user awareness, ChatGPT still has a considerable gap compared to e-commerce platforms like Amazon. However, there is no doubt that as ChatGPT accelerates its commercialization, the global e-commerce landscape will welcome a new player.