How Can Retailers Connect Their Product Catalogs to Microsoft Copilot Shopping?

What are the routes into Copilot shopping?

Microsoft's commerce page says Stripe or PayPal customers are not integrated automatically. The experience is opt-in and needs extra support from those partners.

How does Microsoft Merchant Center fit in?

Merchant Center is where Microsoft receives product data. Microsoft says it uses both information found on the web and the merchant's feed to surface products in organic Copilot results. Microsoft's commerce page now says a Merchant Center account is required to onboard to Copilot Checkout, and that a product feed powers both discovery and checkout; the January 2026 launch post had said it was not required.

For checkout through Merchant Center, Microsoft lists two steps:

1. Add store settings: return policy, customer support details and Copilot Checkout settings.
2. Add UCP feed attributes: native checkout eligibility for each product, product warnings where needed, and a unique Merchant Item ID.

Microsoft describes UCP as a layer on top of feeds: feeds enable discovery, and UCP enables checkout and post-purchase actions inside Copilot. UCP is the same open protocol Google uses for checkout in AI Mode and Gemini, so work on one can help with the other.

What do shoppers see in Copilot?

Microsoft's help page for shoppers explains what your data feeds into. Shoppers can ask Copilot about products in a conversation, or browse a personalised Shopping homepage of recommendations and deals that updates as they shop. Copilot chooses options based on the prompt, likely engagement, available merchant data and other factors. Selecting a product shows details such as sizes, retailers, review summaries, return windows and price history, and Microsoft notes that the details shown depend on what the merchant provides. Results come from across the web and from advertisers, with sponsored links labelled.

The practical point is that missing data shows up directly. A product with no return window, sizes or reviews in your feed or on your pages gives Copilot less to show, and a competitor with fuller data looks more complete in the same answer.

What are the eligibility rules for Copilot Checkout?

According to Microsoft's commerce page:

• Region and language: English-language merchants selling to US buyers, in US dollars.
• Merchant of record: you remain merchant of record, and your existing payments, fraud, tax, fulfilment and reconciliation systems are used.
• Privacy and trust: you must meet Microsoft's privacy and responsible AI standards and your payment provider's security requirements.
• One payment partner: each merchant uses a single checkout partner. By default it is the first to complete onboarding, and you can ask to change it.
• Domain level: onboarding is confirmed per domain, so a group with several brands chooses which domains to include.
• Surfaces: Copilot.com and the Copilot mobile app, with more planned.

How do the partner routes work?

Shopify. Shopify merchants were enrolled automatically after an opt-out window, through Shopify's Agentic Storefronts. How the channels and settings work is covered in how Shopify Agentic Storefronts works. There are no extra onboarding steps; you control which products and channels are included in Shopify admin.

PayPal. PayPal's Store Sync makes a merchant's products discoverable and purchasable across AI platforms, including Copilot. PayPal handles the agent interaction and payment, while the merchant's API handles product validation, pricing, shipping and fulfilment. Merchants on other payment processors can use PayPal's Cart API to sync their catalogue and connect real-time cart checks.

Stripe. Stripe's Agentic Commerce Suite makes products discoverable, simplifies checkout and accepts agent payments using Shared Payment Tokens, which let an agent pay without seeing card details. Stripe named Etsy sellers and retailers such as Urban Outfitters and Anthropologie among early Copilot Checkout merchants.

What should you do?

1. Open or review your Microsoft Merchant Center account. Verify your store and submit a full feed with accurate titles, prices, availability, GTINs and images.
2. Add return and support policies in store settings, since AI answers use them to judge products.
3. Choose your checkout route: Shopify settings, PayPal, Stripe or UCP attributes in Merchant Center. Google's version of the UCP requirements is covered in what Google's UCP setup requires of Merchant Center sellers.
4. Keep prices and stock fresh. Submit updates quickly and notify Bing when pages change, as covered in how Bing, Copilot and IndexNow work together.
5. Test in Copilot. Ask shopping questions for your products and check what appears, the price shown and whether checkout works.
6. Track results by product, as covered in how to track your products in shopping carousels.

Much of the feed work overlaps with ChatGPT, covered in how to prepare a catalogue for Buy it in ChatGPT and how ChatGPT is becoming a shopping platform.

What about Brand Agents?

Microsoft launched Brand Agents alongside Copilot Checkout. They are AI shopping assistants that run on the retailer's own website, in the brand's voice, answering product questions and guiding purchases. They do not put products into Copilot, but they come from the same Microsoft Advertising programme and can be set up at the same time.

We have not onboarded a store to Copilot Checkout, and Microsoft has not published results beyond its own marketing claims. This page is based on Microsoft Advertising's January 2026 announcement and its agentic commerce page, and on partner announcements.

What might this look like in practice?

Consider an illustrative homeware brand, Lintel & Oak, on WooCommerce with Stripe payments. It had no Microsoft Merchant Center account, so Copilot's answers about linen bedding described its products from old retailer listings. The team opened a Merchant Center account, submitted its feed with return and support policies, and applied through Stripe for Copilot Checkout. After onboarding, Copilot showed current prices, and shoppers could buy the brand's duvet covers in the chat, with orders arriving in the existing order system. The team kept feed updates running daily and checked Copilot's answers each month.

What do people ask about Copilot shopping?

Do I need Microsoft Merchant Center to sell through Copilot Checkout?

Yes, according to Microsoft's commerce page: to onboard to Copilot Checkout you must have a Microsoft Merchant Center account, and a product feed powers both discovery and checkout. The January 2026 launch post had said an account was not required, so older articles may still say so.

Are Shopify stores already in Copilot Checkout?

Yes. Shopify merchants were enrolled automatically, with controls in Shopify admin.

Can merchants outside the US use Copilot Checkout?

Not yet. It is limited to English-language merchants selling to US buyers.

Who is the merchant of record?

The retailer. Copilot does not become merchant of record.