Selling through ChatGPT: what a small merchant needs first

If you run a small shop, you have probably seen headlines about buying things inside ChatGPT. This guide is about the practical side. What does OpenAI ask a merchant for, which part is the product feed, and what should you have ready before you apply?

Where things stand

OpenAI's documentation says: "Onboarding product feeds in ChatGPT is currently available to approved partners." You apply through a merchant form at chatgpt.com/merchants. There is no self-serve switch you can flip today, and nobody, including us, can promise you approval.

That does not make preparation pointless. If you are accepted, you will need a valid feed, and you will need it quickly. Getting it clean now is the part you control.

Feed, checkout and payment are three jobs

OpenAI's key concepts page splits commerce into three flows. For Instant Checkout, a merchant implements all of them.

• Product feed: structured data about what you sell, refreshed regularly, so ChatGPT can show correct prices and stock.
• Checkout: the Agentic Checkout spec, where ChatGPT acts as the buyer's agent and calls endpoints on your systems. OpenAI says the actual checkout state and payment processing happen on the merchant's side.
• Delegated payment: a way for OpenAI to pass payment details securely to you or your payment provider, so you can take the money.

OpenAI is not the merchant of record. You bring your own payment provider and handle payments as you would for any other digital sale. The Agentic Commerce Protocol docs say sellers stay responsible for calculating amounts, managing inventory, processing payment and fulfilling orders.

A checklist before you apply

1. A real, public website with a page for every product. The url field must point at one.
2. Stable product IDs. If your IDs change every export, fix that first.
3. Clean product data: plain text descriptions, direct JPEG or PNG images, honest availability.
4. A seller name and a brand for every product.
5. A returns policy you can link to. Write down your return window in days.
6. Privacy policy and terms pages. The spec asks for both links if you want to offer checkout.
7. A payment provider that you already use for card payments.
8. Someone who can keep the feed fresh. A feed that says in stock for something you sold last week is a problem.

How feeds get to OpenAI

There are two routes. One is file upload, which the upload guide describes as pushing feed files over SFTP. The other is an API that lets you upsert product changes instead. OpenAI's get started page suggests a complete catalogue once a day by file upload, with API updates through the day. A smaller catalogue can use the API for both.

The upload guide asks for a stable file name that you overwrite each time, and lists Parquet, compressed JSONL, compressed CSV and compressed TSV as supported. So you may need to compress the file SKUHelm hosts before sending it. Check what your onboarding contact says, since the details are theirs to set.

What to do this week

Run your catalogue through a checker and look at the pattern of failures. On most small shops, a handful of store-wide gaps account for nearly all of them: no seller name, no brand, no policy links. Those take an afternoon. Then submit the merchant form with a clean feed behind you.

What you can skip for now

You do not need reviews, star ratings or dimensions to get started. The spec lists them as optional. You do not need a promotions feed, and OpenAI says promotions can only be sent through the API anyway. You do not need to settle on every market-specific field, because those need extra setup. Get the nine required fields right across the whole catalogue first. That is the bar.

Questions to ask yourself honestly

• Could I fulfil an order that arrives while I am asleep? Checkout through an assistant can happen at any hour.
• Is my stock count reliable enough that I would stand behind it on a stranger's order?
• Do my policies say what I actually do, in words a customer could rely on?
• Who answers if a buyer has a problem? The buyer will come to you, not to OpenAI.

None of these is a reason not to apply. They are reasons to know your answers before an approval email lands.