AI Chatbot Glossary
What Is Agentic Checkout?
Agentic checkout is a purchase flow in which an AI agent completes the buying steps for the shopper: it resolves the exact product variant, applies a valid discount, prepares the cart, and hands the shopper a ready-to-pay checkout, so the person only confirms and pays.
Definition
In an agentic checkout, the agent does the work a shopper would normally do by hand: pick the variant and quantity, check that it is in stock, validate a discount code, and assemble a cart or checkout session through the store platform's API. Payment itself still runs through the store's normal checkout and payment provider, so fraud checks, taxes, and shipping rules stay unchanged. Some platforms now expose dedicated checkout APIs for third-party agents, which is how "buy inside ChatGPT" style experiences work. On a merchant's own website, the same idea is simpler: the chat assistant adds items to the real cart or generates a pre-filled checkout link.
Why Agentic Checkout Matters for AI Chatbots
Every manual step between "I want this" and "paid" loses a share of buyers, and chat is where purchase intent is stated most clearly. An assistant that can act on that intent turns a support conversation into a completed order without the shopper hunting through menus. Chatonbo offers a conservative version of this on Shopify: the assistant can add products to the shopper's real cart from inside the chat (Pro and Business) and build one-click checkout links with a validated discount (Business). It never charges a card itself; the store's own checkout handles payment.
See it in practice:
See in-chat add to cartRelated Terms
Agentic Commerce
Agentic commerce is online shopping where an AI agent takes actions on the shopper's behalf - looking up order status, applying discounts, confirming stock, and building checkout links - instead of only answering questions.
Checkout Link (Cart Permalink)
A checkout link is a pre-filled URL that adds specific products - the right variant, quantity, and discount - to a shopper's cart and sends them straight to checkout in one tap.
AI Shopping Agent
An AI shopping agent is an AI system that shops on behalf of a person: it searches products across stores, compares options, tracks prices, and in some cases completes the purchase, acting from the buyer's side rather than the seller's.
Conversational Commerce
Conversational commerce is the practice of buying and selling through chat - letting customers discover products, get recommendations, ask questions, and complete a purchase inside a messaging conversation.