Abercrombie & Fitch (A&F) has announced a new agentic commerce partnership which will enable it to become one of the first in the world to make its products available to purchase via genAI chatbots like Perplexity.

During the company’s third quarter earnings call on Tuesday, A&F chief executive Fran Horowitz revealed that it is joining forces with PayPal and retail technology business Cymbio on the move.

The partnership comes as PayPal and Perplexity collaborate to allow US shoppers to checkout with certain retailers without leaving the answer engine.

PayPal said the move marks one of the first-ever "live, end-to-end AI-powered shopping experiences".

The Cymbio platform automates e-commerce sales operation processes, such as inventory, order management, billing, and reconciliation.

Commenting on the news, Horowitz said: “We’re very excited about a new partnership with PayPal and Cymbio, our technology and marketplace sales partner that will enable agentic commerce and AI answer engines like Perplexity, where customers can seamlessly complete transactions directly within their AI conversation without even leaving the chat.”

The move comes as A+F recorded third quarter net sales of $1.3 billion, up seven per cent from last year.

This represented the 12th consecutive quarter of growth, with net sales led by by Americas and EMEA, which were both up seven per cent.

Growth was partially offset by a six per cent decline in the APAC region.

In October, PayPal agreed a partnership with OpenAI to embed its digital wallet into ChatGPT and connect tens of millions of PayPal merchants to the platform, with a launch targeted for 2026.

OpenAI recently introduced Instant Checkout and a “Buy Now” button in ChatGPT, initially supporting Etsy and Shopify and later expanding to Walmart.

Under the latest deal, PayPal will adopt OpenAI’s Agentic Commerce Protocol so ChatGPT users can pay using PayPal, while merchants using PayPal will have their product catalogues made discoverable within ChatGPT without individual integrations.

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