TikTok is building in-app checkout and AI shopping agents with Stripe, Shopify, Salesforce and Shoplazza, keeping purchases inside the app.
TikTok is building tools to let shoppers buy products without leaving the app, naming Stripe, Shopify, Salesforce and Shoplazza among the payment and commerce providers it is working with.
The company set out the tools at Advertising Week New York 2026, with its two main features including Buy Direct and Shopping Assistant.
TikTok: Checkout moving into the feed
Buy Direct is an in-app checkout that lets users pay a brand directly from the ‘For You’ feed in a single tap, the social media giant said. Shopping Assistant is a conversational AI agent that answers questions on product details, sizing, shipping and availability, then completes the purchase within one chat thread. The company said Shopping Assistant is built into several points across the app.
David Kaufman, TikTok’s Global Head of Monetization Product Partnerships, said the tools combine AI, automation and creativity to improve advertiser performance while cutting the work involved.
How Buy Direct settles payments is the main change for the payments industry. The social media platform’s current in-app checkout, built with Shopify, completes the transaction on the merchant’s own e-commerce domain rather than inside the app.
The new checkout flow draws on the payment methods a merchant already runs in its Shopify store, supporting credit and debit cards, Apple Pay, Shop Pay and PayPal, among others.
The social media platform describes Buy Direct as completing the purchase without the user leaving the app, which points to a more native flow. The company has not yet publish details on processing fees, settlement, or which party acts as merchant of record.
Payment partners named, roles unspecified
TikTok listed Salesforce, Shopify, Shoplazza and Stripe as the platforms and payment providers behind the features, and said more would join in the future. Stripe’s inclusion is new to this announcement, and the social media company has not yet said which provider will power which part of the checkout, or what merchants will pay to use Buy Direct.
TikTok has sold products through Shopify since 2021, when the two launched a pilot letting Shopify merchants add a shopping tab and tag products in videos. Those early features sent buyers to the merchant’s own storefront to pay. Buy Direct shortens that path to a single transaction inside the feed.
The social media company also introduced Agentic Leads, an AI agent that captures and qualifies sales prospects through guided conversations in Direct Messages and on advertiser-owned websites.
A separate update to GMV Max, its TikTok Shop ad tool, will factor affiliate commissions, coupons and referral fees into the return-on-investment figure advertisers optimise against.
The scale TikTok is claiming
TikTok supported the announcement with third-party figures, citing a PF Global report finding that activity on the platform generated $81bn in GDP for US businesses, with 54 million Americans buying a product after watching a video on the platform.
It also cited Kantar’s Media Reactions 2026 report, which it said ranked TikTok first among platforms where marketers plan to raise ad spend in 2027, with 84% of surveyed marketers already running ads on it.
Use of TikTok’s for Business Model Context Protocol, which lets developers build AI agents on top of its ads system, rose more than 200% for campaign activation since launch, the company said. It now runs as a connector on several AI platforms, including Claude, Perplexity, Replit, Snowflake and the IAB Tech Lab Agent Registry.
TikTok said the tools will roll out to US advertisers, without giving a date for wider availability.
