PayPal (PYPL, Financial) powers Perplexity's leap into in-chat shopping for its 15 million monthly users. With a few taps in the chat window, you can now buy products using PayPal or Venmo—no more hopping between apps to finish checkout.
Behind the scenes, PayPal's tokenized wallet and passkey system step in to verify buyers and sellers, so you don't need a password. Perplexity's co-founder Aravind Srinivas says they teamed up because “accuracy and trust matter when you're making buying decisions,” and PayPal CEO Alex Chriss adds, “Conversations should drive commerce—securely and seamlessly.”
Backed by big names like Nvidia (NVDA, Financial) and Jeff Bezos, Perplexity just bumped its valuation to $14 billion in a late-stage round (it was $9 billion in December), signaling that investors believe in this conversational-commerce vision.
This move puts Perplexity ahead of the pack: OpenAI's shopping feature still gets you out of the chat if you're looking to shop, and Apple (AAPL, Financial) is only exploring talks after seeing Safari queries dip. Embedding payments directly in AI search could be a game-changer for e-commerce convenience—and a solid growth driver for PayPal.
Why It Matters: If talking to a chatbot becomes your new checkout lane, PayPal could see a surge in transaction volume—and Perplexity may redefine how we shop online.
Investors will be watching PYPL's next quarterly report and Perplexity's funding progress to see if in-chat purchases really take off.
