Synchrony's store cards for Amazon, Walmart, and Lowe's will work inside ChatGPT. The issuer is in talks with retailers and eyeing Anthropic and Google chatbots next.
Synchrony Financial is working with OpenAI to let shoppers complete purchases inside ChatGPT using private-label cards issued for retailers like Amazon, Walmart, and Lowe's. The partnership is one of the first moves by a U.S. consumer lender to embed financing, payment processing, and rewards into a chatbot environment.
Maran Nalluswami, Synchrony's chief strategy officer, said the goal is to have the company's cards preloaded and ready to settle transactions within the AI chat interface. "Currently, transactions initiated through AI don't finalize within the provider's ecosystem," Nalluswami said. "Our goal is to have our cards preloaded and ready to complete purchases inside these AI environments."
Most agentic commerce efforts so far redirect users to external brand websites to finish a purchase. OpenAI has signed up Visa and Stripe to process payments inside ChatGPT, and the Synchrony deal extends that capability to store-specific credit cards that carry discounts and promotional financing offers.
Synchrony is also launching a ChatGPT plugin that lets users browse marketplace deals, check promotional financing options, and see partner offers without leaving the chat. The company is in talks with retail partners to embed their cards into ChatGPT, a process Nalluswami said will take several months of negotiations.
Consumer hesitation around sharing credit card details with AI agents remains a hurdle, as does transaction security. Another open question is the revenue split for in-chat purchases. Nalluswami said retailers, Synchrony, and OpenAI will need to work out the economics of these transactions together.
Synchrony is exploring similar integrations with other AI chatbots, including Anthropic's Claude and Google's Gemini, to put its cards across multiple platforms. Internally, the company is using OpenAI's latest language models to speed up product development cycles.
The push comes as OpenAI prepares for a widely anticipated initial public offering that could raise billions. The pressure to expand ChatGPT beyond conversational AI into transactional commerce is building as the company scales toward that listing.
No specific date has been set for when store card payments will go live inside ChatGPT. The plugin is expected to launch later this year.
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