Loyalty benefits used to show up at checkout: a card swiped, a code entered, a discount applied after the decision was already made. That moment is moving earlier, into the conversation where an artificial intelligence agent is still deciding where to buy.
Synchrony announced an enterprise collaboration with OpenAI on Aug. 17 to power what the companies call “the next era of agentic commerce,” launching a ChatGPT plugin that lets shoppers browse promotional financing and partner offers from the Synchrony Marketplace directly inside a ChatGPT conversation.
Synchrony issues store-branded credit cards for retailers including Amazon, Walmart and Lowe’s. Its longer-term goal, CNBC reported, is to make those cards a native payment option when a shopper asks ChatGPT to research and buy something, so the purchase never has to redirect to a retailer’s website. Getting general-purpose cards working inside ChatGPT will take six to 12 months, according to The Next Web, and private-label store cards will take longer since each requires separate coordination with the retail partner.
Target has already built a version of what Synchrony is now attempting. Ask Microsoft Copilot for a table lamp from Target, and it returns recommendations, then prompts the shopper to connect their Target account right inside the chat. Once connected, Target Circle discounts, free shipping and an extra 5% off for Circle Card holders apply automatically at checkout, without the shopper ever leaving the conversation, Target said.
Target says it’s the first mass retailer with loyalty-linked shopping experiences live across three major AI platforms: the Google ecosystem, including Search and the Gemini app; Microsoft Copilot; Microsoft Copilot; and ChatGPT.
A Loyalty Program AI Can’t Find Doesn’t Really Exist
Target’s traffic numbers show why that integration matters commercially. Digital traffic from external AI platforms is growing more than 3.5 times faster than the industry average, Target said in its second-quarter earnings release, and non-merchandise revenue, including Roundel advertising and Target Circle 360 membership, grew more than 20% the same quarter. An AI agent comparing where to buy something can only factor in a loyalty discount, a shipping perk or a financing offer if that benefit is something the AI can see and apply, not something a shopper would otherwise click through by hand.
That’s the mechanism connecting Synchrony’s announcement to Target’s results. Unless loyalty benefits are machine-readable, an AI agent evaluating where to buy something has no way to factor them into its recommendation, and a brand’s value gets reduced to price and shipping speed alone.
Personalization has become table stakes in loyalty, and the differentiator now is whether that value can be surfaced by an AI system in real time, Avery Miller, Visa’s vice president of global loyalty for value-added services, and Kipp Johnson, Braze’s senior director of AI solutions consulting, told PYMNTS. More than 6 in 10 U.S. consumers used ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini in the past year, with power users replacing old shopping habits rather than layering AI on top of them, PYMNTS Intelligence found.
Loyalty Now Has to Speak to the Algorithm First
Static point balances are giving way to systems built to be read by machines first, making a brand’s value something an artificial intelligence bot can query and compare rather than something a human reads in a rewards email.
Sephora built a version of the same idea in March, launching a ChatGPT app that pulls a customer’s existing Beauty Insider rewards into the same conversation where they ask for beauty advice, Modern Retail reported.
Synchrony’s plugin is what that shift looks like from the financing side rather than the retailer side. An offer that used to require a shopper to search a card issuer’s site now shows up unprompted, inside the same conversation where the shopper is deciding what to buy and how to pay for it. The risk for any company slower to make that move is straightforward. If an AI agent decides where a purchase happens before a shopper opens a browser, a retailer or lender whose loyalty benefits aren’t visible to that agent loses the sale to a competitor whose benefits are already built into the conversation.
