The news: Square unveiled a ChatGPT app and Claude plugin that lets consumers find sellers and complete transactions through AI conversational commerce, per a press release.

All eligible sellers will be automatically onboarded onto AI platforms. Square food and beverage sellers in the US will be first to receive AI platform enablement. 

How we got here: We forecast 152.9 million US users will use AI platforms this year. While AI and agentic commerce has yet to gain traction, consumers are turning to AI chatbots for discovery, research, and comparison needs—opening a new acquisition channel for brands.

Why this matters: AI platform visibility positions food and beverage sellers to capture the first wave of AI commerce, especially as users acclimated to AI-mediated discovery feel more comfortable transacting via chatbot. We anticipate that by 2029, AI platform-driven retail ecommerce sales will equal $144.45 billion, per our forecast.

Food and beverage sellers may be the pilot industry for a key reason: inventory tracking. AI chatbots struggle to connect fragmented data systems that make up many retail settings—particularly for smaller retailers. 

A restaurant menu alleviates many of those concerns for Square’s app and plugins. To onboard more kinds of merchants, AI and payment providers will need to find ways to close those gaps for inventory management.

Recommendations for payment providers: Some retailers, like Etsy, are getting a head start on AI commerce by building their own apps within the chatbot. If payment providers fail to make their apps or plugins first, they could lose an opportunity to be upstream from retailers as consumers shift their shopping behaviors.