The news: PayPal merchants will now be discoverable within Perplexity, per a press release—right in time for Cyber Five.

Perplexity users will be able to browse merchant catalogs and check out mid-chat through PayPal’s agentic commerce services, building on Perplexity’s “Buy with Pro” release.

Merchants include Abercrombie & Fitch, Ashley Furniture, Fabletics, Adorama, and NewEgg, with more to be added soon.

How we got here: Perplexity is integrating its chatbot  into the consumer shopping journey—taking advantage of PayPal and Venmo’s combined 170.1 million US users, per our forecast, to boost its adoption. 

It partnered with PayPal this summer to bring “conversational commerce” to its users and released its new browser and a free subscription to Perplexity Pro for PayPal and Venmo users. 

Why this matters: Discoverability is a chief concern for merchants, especially as the rise of AI threatens Google’s search dominance. 

Chatbots like Perplexity and ChatGPT offer novel ways for merchants to get exposure to new customers. AI and agents are anticipated to drive 21% of all holiday orders this year, per Salesforce projections—to the tune of $263 billion in sales.

Our take: PayPal merchants stand to benefit from the rising tide of genAI adopters who are reinventing the research, product recommendation, and deal-seeking status quo. 

Merchants that cater to Gen Z should push to be early adopters of the new update: 47% of Gen Zers already have found a new brand or product through AI, per an Adobe survey. Early mover merchants could get a boost from genAI holiday volume this season.