PayPal Stock Surges on OpenAI Partnership Expanding ChatGPT Payments

PayPal Holdings, Inc. shares experienced a dramatic surge in premarket trading on Tuesday, October 28, 2025, jumping nearly 15% to $81.15 following the announcement of a strategic partnership with OpenAI. The deal positions PayPal as the first major payments wallet to be integrated directly into ChatGPT, enabling seamless transactions for hundreds of millions of users.

This collaboration marks a significant expansion of PayPal’s reach into AI-driven commerce and represents one of the most substantial partnerships in OpenAI’s push to transform ChatGPT into a comprehensive e-commerce platform.

New OpenAI Deal Marks Major Step in PayPal’s AI Expansion

The partnership centers on PayPal’s adoption of the Agentic Commerce Protocol (ACP), a joint initiative between OpenAI and Stripe designed to enable AI agents to manage purchases seamlessly. Through this integration, ChatGPT’s 700 million-plus weekly users will be able to discover products and complete purchases instantly using PayPal’s wallet, which includes multiple funding options such as bank accounts, balances, and cards, along with PayPal’s buyer and seller protections and post-purchase services.

PayPal CEO Alex Chriss emphasized the scale of the opportunity, noting that hundreds of millions of people use ChatGPT weekly for everyday tasks including product discovery, while over 400 million use PayPal to shop. The partnership aims to streamline the journey from browsing to purchasing, allowing users to go from chat to checkout in just a few taps. Additionally, PayPal will support OpenAI Instant Checkout through a delegated payments API, managing payment processing for card transactions on behalf of merchants.

The market response was immediate and substantial. PayPal shares opened at $70.77 on October 27 and surged to $81.15 in premarket trading on October 28—a gain of $10.90 or 15.52%. This represents a significant reversal for the stock, which had been trading at $70.25 at the previous close with a market capitalization of $67.115 billion. The premarket jump pushed the company’s valuation above $67 billion, signaling strong investor confidence in the strategic direction.

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New Partnership Unlocks Global Merchant Opportunities for PayPal

For PayPal’s tens of millions of merchant partners, the ACP integration promises to unlock substantial new distribution channels. Beginning in 2026, product catalogs from small businesses and major retail brands across apparel, fashion, beauty, home improvement, and electronics will become discoverable and purchasable through ChatGPT commerce via PayPal’s ACP server. This infrastructure will function as a trusted, scalable access layer to PayPal’s global merchant network without requiring individual merchant integrations, with PayPal managing merchant routing, payment validation, and orchestration behind the scenes.

The partnership extends beyond commerce integration, as PayPal announced it is expanding its AI strategy with OpenAI by scaling access to ChatGPT Enterprise for its 24,000+ employees, enabling engineers with Codex capabilities, and broadly expanding direct use of OpenAI’s APIs. This comprehensive approach aims to accelerate PayPal’s product development cycles, boost employee productivity, and enhance customer experiences across the platform.

This deal positions PayPal competitively against other e-commerce players in the AI-driven shopping space. OpenAI previously enabled shopping from Shopify and Etsy merchants through ChatGPT and announced a similar partnership with Walmart just two weeks prior. However, PayPal’s integration as the first major payments wallet represents a unique positioning that leverages its existing user base and trusted brand in digital payments.

With key stock metrics showing a PE ratio of 15.04, a 52-week range of $55.85 to $93.66, and an analyst average price target of $81.75, the partnership arrives at a critical juncture for PayPal’s ongoing transformation strategy.

Disclaimer: The author does not hold or have a position in any securities discussed in the article. All stock prices were quoted at the time of writing.