Synchrony, the consumer finance company behind store-card programs for retailers such as Amazon, Walmart and Lowe's, announced an enterprise collaboration with OpenAI on August 17 aimed at embedding its financing, rewards and loyalty products directly into ChatGPT-driven shopping.

What was announced

The centerpiece is a Synchrony plugin for ChatGPT's plugin directory that lets consumers discover savings and offers and browse promotional financing, deals and everyday value from participating Synchrony retail partners without leaving the chat interface. The companies frame it as bringing financing and loyalty into "AI-native shopping and checkout experiences" as more purchase discovery and comparison shifts into conversational agents rather than traditional search or store apps.

The deal runs in both directions: alongside surfacing its products inside ChatGPT, Synchrony says it will deploy OpenAI's latest models — including GPT-5.6 variants — internally through ChatGPT Work, Codex and AWS Bedrock as part of a broader enterprise AI adoption push, including staff training aimed at building internal AI fluency.

"With decades of experience at the intersection of consumer financing, payments, loyalty, and merchant partnerships, Synchrony is uniquely positioned to help shape how AI-powered commerce evolves," said Maran Nalluswami, Synchrony's chief strategy and business development officer, adding that the tie-up "marks a major milestone for Synchrony, our millions of customers and hundreds of thousands of partner locations." OpenAI's Kaylin Voss said Synchrony is "approaching that opportunity from both sides: bringing OpenAI into the experiences it creates for customers and partners, while deploying our most advanced models and tools across its own enterprise."

Why it matters

The partnership is a concrete example of the "agentic commerce" push both companies have been signaling for months — OpenAI has been building out checkout and shopping capability inside ChatGPT, while payment and financing incumbents are racing to make sure their products stay visible as more purchase decisions get intermediated by AI agents instead of a retailer's own website or app. For Synchrony, whose business depends on being the financing option shoppers choose at checkout, plugging directly into ChatGPT is a bet that agent-driven shopping needs the same financing rails as traditional e-commerce — and that being embedded early matters as those habits form.