Reach AI Shoppers with PayPal Store Sync
The shopping journey is being rewritten in real time. Where consumers once started in a search bar or on a product page, more and more of them are beginning — and finishing — inside an AI conversation.
They ask Copilot for a recommendation. They ask Perplexity to compare options. They ask Meta’s AI for the right gift. And the merchants whose catalogues aren’t legible to those surfaces simply aren’t in the running.
That’s the gap , the parent company of , is closing with the launch of the PayPal Store Sync integration. Available now in the BigCommerce App Marketplace and Channel Manager, the new app connects a merchant’s product catalogue, inventory, and order management directly to AI shopping surfaces including Microsoft Copilot, Meta, and Perplexity, with PayPal handling the checkout when a shopper is ready to buy.
A decade-long partnership, built for what’s next
The launch marks a significant milestone in the decade-long partnership between Commerce and PayPal, and it positions BigCommerce merchants at the front of a category that’s reshaping retail: , where AI agents discover, recommend, and facilitate purchases on behalf of consumers.
The mechanics are deliberately simple. A BigCommerce merchant installs PayPal Store Sync from the App Marketplace, and product data, including pricing, images, descriptions, reviews, inventory becomes instantly accessible to the AI platforms where consumers increasingly begin their shopping journeys. When a shopper finds a product through one of those surfaces, PayPal facilitates a seamless checkout. The merchant doesn’t have to build a new integration for every AI channel, and they don’t have to give up the customer relationship to get reach.
Why this matters now
The market signal is impossible to ignore. AI-driven retail sales increased nearly 700% year-over-year in the most recent holiday season, according to Adobe Analytics, a clear sign that the way consumers find and buy is undergoing structural change.
For Michaela Weber, VP of Product, Payments at Commerce, that change is exactly why launches like this one matter. Speaking at Commerce Live 2026 about the broader payments roadmap, Weber framed Commerce’s strategy as moving the customer experience. As she put it on stage: “We launched BigCommerce Payments to alleviate the friction in moving between BigCommerce and your payment provider portal; it’s taking payments from bolted on to built in.”
That same philosophy carries through PayPal Store Sync. Instead of asking merchants to stitch together discovery on one side and checkout on the other, the integration delivers both in a single, native experience.
What BigCommerce merchants get
PayPal Store Sync gives merchants five concrete advantages out of the box:
- Instant AI discoverability: Products become searchable and purchasable across AI-powered experiences without custom development.
- Broad reach from a single connection: One install opens access to Perplexity, Meta, Microsoft Copilot, and forthcoming surfaces.
- Trusted checkout: PayPal handles payments, fraud detection, identity verification, buyer protection, and dispute resolution.
- Merchant control is preserved: Businesses remain the merchant of record and retain brand identity, customer relationships, and fulfillment.
- Simple setup: The app is available directly in the BigCommerce App Marketplace with guided onboarding and no additional technical lift.
That last point matters more than it might seem. The protocol landscape behind agentic commerce is moving fast — MCP, A2A, UCP, ACP, with new standards emerging constantly — and building a custom integration for every new channel isn’t realistic for most brands. PayPal Store Sync absorbs that complexity, so merchants can focus on what they sell and who they sell to, not on which schema this week’s AI platform requires.
Trust is the prerequisite
At Commerce Live 2026, Weber sat down with Mike Edmonds, VP of Agentic for Commercial Growth at PayPal, to talk through what it actually takes for a transaction to happen inside an AI surface.
Edmonds was direct: “Commerce doesn’t happen without a transaction. In the era of traditional ecommerce, we built trust by knowing your business and knowing your consumer and making sure both actors had a trusted relationship before a transaction could occur. That same paradigm applies in agentic commerce. We’re just adding another actor: agents. So, now it’s know your agent.”
That trust layer is exactly what PayPal brings to the Store Sync experience. Fraud, identity, and chargebacks don’t become less important in an agentic world; they become more important, because an invisible layer of agents is now transacting on behalf of consumers. With PayPal as the checkout layer, BigCommerce merchants get 25-plus years of consumer trust and risk infrastructure already wired in.
Sharon Gee on the bigger picture
Sharon Gee, Senior Vice President of Product for AI at Commerce, framed the launch in stark terms: “AI is fundamentally changing how people discover and buy products. Merchants need to meet shoppers in those moments and make it easy to move from discovery to purchase or risk being left out of the journey. With PayPal Store Sync, merchants can instantly connect their catalogue to AI-powered shopping experiences and the PayPal consumer network, ensuring they’re not just present, but positioned to convert in the environments where commerce is evolving.”
Available today
The PayPal Store Sync app is available now on the BigCommerce App Marketplace for US-based BigCommerce merchants using PayPal for payment processing. Eligible merchants can install it today and begin connecting their catalogues to AI-powered shopping experiences within minutes.
The shoppers are already in the AI conversation. The question is whether your products are.
Learn more about AI-powered discovery and checkout through PayPal Store Sync, or get started with a free demo.
