đ¨ALERT: ChatGPT Agentic Commerce "Universal Shopping Cart" Feature is Imminent đ
TestingCatalog reveals some ChatGPT users are seeing a test of a persistent cart feature, we have all the details!
Editorial note: Here in central-NC, thankfully, we had less snow and ice than predicted. I hope our friends in the deep south and NE are doing well. If youâre without power, but still on your phone, hereâs an unusual Sunday post because the news just dropped and in the age of Agentic we favor speed. Special thanks to the folks working around the clock to get everyoneâs power back on. Thanks for reading and stay safe and warm everyone! Now hereâs todayâs breaking news:
Instacart ChatGPT app integration is a Multi-item Instant Checkout
When I recorded the Instacart APP live demo, I pointed out that when you use ChatGPT to âtalk toâ Instacart and build a cart, then it checks out through Instant Checkout. When I saw that, I had an inkling that in Q1 of 2026 weâd be seeing a multi-cart of some kind come out.
Universal Cart: Long Time Coming
Before we talk about the details, Iâve been in ecommerce since 1999 and in that time Iâve seen at least 10, maybe as many as 20 startups and big companies attempt the holy grail - A universal merchant-friendly cart that works across more than 5 merchants. Many have tried, all have failed. Whatâs different this time is that we have many new building blocks:
LLMs - their ability to apply inference intelligence to our industry creates a special ability to dramatically compress the pipeline
Credit card tokenization and vaults - This is the underlying technology that allowed ChatGPT, Stripe to create ACP and have what I think of as the first third party marketplace with a merchant-of-record checkout. Without this incredibly merchant-friendly huge step, we wouldnât be talking about a universal cart.
Open source standards - We used to have 'Standardsâ with a capital S. In todayâs world, you can create an open-source standard (note the small âsâ). You publish it on github, open it up, and itâs off to the races.
Evidence the ChatGPT Universal InstantCart is ComingâŚ
LLM beta feature tracker TestingCatalog has a report from a user this weekend that is seeing in their ChatGPT user interface a âCartâ section.
Hereâs what the âcartsâ section looks like when you click on it:
What this is implies is we are going to (very soon) have the ability to:
Have a persistent cart. While youâre chatting with ChatGPT, youâll be able to throw several items into a cart,
Multiple carts - The (0) and word âcartsâ in that second screenshot is the giveaway here. There will be multiple carts and..
Named carts - I suspect they will be named. Imagine a world where you have carts like: weekly groceries, pet items, xmas gifts,
Multi-merchant carts - Youâll be able to throw an item in the cart from etsy, chewy, and X other merchants and check out once.
Iâm somewhat giddy with excitement over this for these reason:
This is super-hard technologically, I canât wait to try it out and see how they pulled it off.
This is the big unlock on Agentic Commerce - everyone knows single item carts arenât profitable, thatâs being solved early. Weâre going to have an epic Holiday 26.
âChatGPT Instant Universal Cartâ removes the last finger hold the Agentic Commerce Naysayers are holding on to. They frequently will point out: Agentic Commerce wonât get any momentum with uni-cart. Multi-cart is too hard or they would have done it at launch, blah blah blah. Universal Agentic Cart will finally knock down the last argument most naysayers have (but the definition-based arguing Naysayers are holding out for full autonomy still).
My 11th prediction was that that ChargPT would make it to âLevel-4â first. This gets them there.
Finally, I predict this is going to be the foundation of many cool new features - ChatGPT and others are going to pack 7 typical years of Agentic Commerce features into 2026 and the cart functionality will play a huge role in this.
New Merchant Center Launching?
Readers of Retailgentic will like this one:
TestingCatalog didnât source this one, and I havenât seen it anywhere else, but so far their leaks are undefeated, so Iâm going to roll the dice they are onto something. I read this as saying that with the new cart functionality or soon after, ChatGPT is going to move from a âgated permissionâ marketplace model to a self-service model and really open the floodgates.
Game on! What do you think? Let us know in commentsâ
Quick Reminder: Webinar Feb 4
Weâre hosting a webinar Feb 4 at 1pm EST with Worldpay and Nekuda where weâll be digging into ACP/UCP. Register here (zoom webinar with Q+A and will be recorded).
IKR!
Very exciting!