Shopify has agreed to let Meta's new AI assistant, Muse, buy from Shopify stores using Shop Pay. It is US-only for now, so it won't affect most NZ stores this year. It is still a good reason to check one thing: if a customer never sees your website or your normal checkout, does anything important about the order go missing?
Meta's Muse now checks out with Shop Pay
Shopify CEO Tobi Lütke announced on 21 September a partnership with Meta "to enable agentic checkout with Shop Pay on all Shopify stores". In plain terms, an AI assistant can complete the purchase itself. A few days later Shopify posted that Muse can now pay with Shop Pay. Muse is Meta's personal AI assistant, which it launched on 8 September. Meta says it can shop and buy on a person's behalf, and that it is rolling out in the US on phones and the web.
In practice, a shopper asks Muse for something, Muse finds a product from a Shopify store, and the purchase goes through Shop Pay inside the chat. The order is still the store's order. But the shopper may never see the store's product page or its usual checkout.
Two things are not clear yet. The wording is "all Shopify stores", and the trade site ContentGrip could not find a documented way for stores to opt out of Muse specifically. We also haven't seen anything on how these orders will show up in Shopify's reports. Neither Shopify nor Meta has published any sales or usage figures.
What this means for a NZ store
For now, very little directly. Muse is US-only, so unless you sell to US customers it won't send you orders yet. It is the second big AI assistant able to buy from Shopify stores, after ChatGPT, so it is worth knowing what changes when the checkout happens somewhere else.
The part most owners won't have thought about is the checkout itself. Shopify's developer documentation says purchases started by AI assistants go through a separate checkout, where "not all checkout blocks are supported". Put simply, some of the extras you've added to your checkout may not show up. Many stores have added things over the years with apps or custom work: a gift message, a delivery instructions box, a "how did you hear about us" question, an upsell, an age check. They work on your own checkout. When an AI assistant does the buying, some of them may not appear at all.
Losing an upsell is no great loss. It matters more if you can't fill the order properly without the information. A florist that needs a card message, or a store that needs a delivery note for rural addresses, would want a backup plan.
The other part is what the assistant knows about your products. Muse and ChatGPT both work from Shopify's product catalog, not from the product page you designed. Shopify says some catalog details may be filled in by its own AI, and can be wrong when the product information behind them is thin. Clear titles, correct product categories, real specifications in proper fields and good photos are what an assistant has to go on.
What we'd do now:
- Make a short list of everything your checkout asks for or shows that isn't standard Shopify, and mark anything an order genuinely depends on.
- For those, decide on a backup, such as asking in the order confirmation email or on the order status page.
- Keep improving your product information. It helps in Google, in Shopify search and with AI assistants.
None of this needs doing this week. It is a good thing to have on your list before these assistants reach NZ.
AI-built stores are here too
In the same week, the AI app builder Lovable announced a Shopify integration that lets people build an online store by chatting with an AI. We haven't tested it, and the announcement doesn't say whether it produces a standard Shopify theme or something more custom. For a small business it may well be a quick way to get a first store online. On its own, though, it won't sort out the product information, checkout setup and sales tracking that decide how well a store performs, including when AI assistants do the buying.
What we're watching
Whether Shopify gives stores a way to switch Muse checkout on or off, and how these orders are labelled in Shopify reports. When Muse leaves the US, and whether Australia and NZ are early on the list. What Lovable's integration produces once someone has tried it with a real product range.
If you'd like someone to check how your checkout and product information hold up when an AI assistant does the buying, that is part of what an AI readiness audit covers.
Sources
- Tobi Lütke (Shopify), post on X announcing the Muse partnership, 21 Sep 2026 - https://x.com/tobi/status/2102090718546198790
- Shopify, post on X: Shop Pay available as a wallet in Muse, Sep 2026 - https://x.com/Shopify/status/2102916088400847300
- Meta, "Introducing Muse", 8 Sep 2026 (updated 30 Sep) - https://about.fb.com/news/2026/09/introducing-muse-personal-ai-agent/
- ContentGrip, "Shopify brings Shop Pay checkout to Meta Muse", 22 Sep 2026 - https://www.contentgrip.com/shopify-muse-shop-pay/
- Shopify developer docs, checkout UI extension page layouts (agentic storefront checkouts) - https://shopify.dev/docs/api/checkout-ui-extensions/2026-07/targets/page-layouts
- Shopify developer docs, About Catalogs (inferred fields) - https://shopify.dev/docs/agents/catalog
- Paul Mace, repost of Lovable's Shopify integration launch on X, 20 Sep 2026 - https://x.com/s1017365/status/2101699281757278508
