Square is launching a new ChatGPAT app and cloud plugin, which enables consumers to find restaurants and place orders directly within these AI platforms – and in turn allows restaurants to accept orders from users and their AI agents without any technical capabilities.
Even more helpful for businesses, Square is processing these AI-powered transactions without the traditional marketplace commission fees that have historically squeezed the food and beverage sector.
However, Square is still charging its usual online order fees of 3.3% plus $0.30 or 2.9% plus $0.30 per transaction for merchants subscribing to the Square Plus and Square Premium plans.
The system pulls directly from the live Square catalog, dynamically mapping items, pricing, complex modifiers and stock availability so autonomous agents never display out-of-stock inventory.
For enterprise testing and deployment validation, operators can manually audit their digital footprint using "@" Symbol for placing orders via the Cash App plugin directly within ChatGPT or connecting via the cloud extension directory.
Depending on the specific AI tool configuration, customers can either finalize checkout entirely inside the chat window via Order by Cash App, or they will be redirected to the merchant’s standard online ordering landing page with the cart already fully filled with their selected items and modifiers.
A more affordable online ordering system for restaurants
To understand the significance of Square’s move, you have to look at the math that restaurant owners will face in 2026. Third-party delivery and ordering apps have fundamentally changed the economics of the restaurant industry.
Currently, the major players—DoorDash, Uber Eats, and Grubhub—charge restaurants heavy premiums for visibility and fulfillment. These exorbitant rates exist primarily because delivery aggregators bundle the logistics costs of gig-worker delivery fleets, platform marketing, and search placement into a single revenue-sharing model.
As of recent pricing structures, DoorDash takes a 15% commission from restaurants on its “Basic” delivery tier, rising to 25% for “Plus” and 30% for its top-tier “Premier” visibility plan. Even pickup orders are subject to a 6% market fee.
Uber Eats similarly sets standard delivery marketplace fees at 20% on its “Lite” tier, up to 30% for premium placements, with pickup order costs up to 10% if in-store pricing is not strictly validated.
Grubhub echoes these rates, which range between 5% to 20% of the total order value depending on the marketing and delivery package chosen.
In addition to these marketplace commissions, platforms still pay their own payment processing fees – typically around 2.5% to 3.05% plus a fixed percentage amount per order.
For an independent restaurant that might make only 3% to 9% net profit on a good day, handing over a 25% or 30% commission on a $40 digital order essentially means preparing food at a loss.
Square’s new integration specifically targets this pain point. By tapping into Square’s ChatGPT and cloud integration, eligible sellers are automatically selected with no additional setup, no new APIs to build, and, importantly, zero additional marketplace fees.
Instead of handing over a 30% cut to the delivery aggregator, a restaurant discovered through an AI agent only pays Square’s standard online transaction processing fee (which typically sits around 2.9% + 30¢ per transaction on a standard plan, with no monthly marketplace commission attached).
Unlike delivery aggregators, Square’s fee model does not inherently subsidize the driver network. Instead, if an AI-generated order requires delivery, Square uses a white-label dispatch network that charges a flat courier fee rather than taxing a percentage of the total basket size — often around $7 to $10, depending on distance. Restaurants can choose to bear this flat delivery cost or pass it on directly to the customer, thereby fully protecting their food margins.
The result is an AI-powered discovery channel that functions like direct, first-party ordering.
How the technology works
Square’s new integration is currently live for US-based food and beverage sellers who have an active Square online ordering profile.
The system operates completely in the background. Sellers manage their discoverability and business information—menus, operating hours, stock levels, and pricing—directly through their existing Square dashboard.
When a consumer asks ChatGPIT or the cloud a question like, “Find me a specialty coffee shop nearby that has great pour-overs and order me a bag of their house roast,” the AI parses real-time data provided by Square.
Customers can browse results, make their selection, and finalize the purchase using the Order by Cash app without leaving the chat interface.
The transaction is then immediately sent into the seller’s existing operational flow, which pops up on their Square point of sale (POS) and kitchen display systems, just like an in-store or direct-website order.
To help operators track returns on this new channel, order origination is clearly tagged as an AI integration within Square’s backend reporting.
“Consumer behavior and preferences are constantly evolving, and business owners can easily find themselves playing an impossible game of catch-up,” said Morgan Kuntz, global partnerships lead at Block, Square’s parent company. “Our investment in agentic commerce is aimed at giving operators some time, helping them connect with customers in their communities and keeping them at the industry forefront. Modern commerce is moving fast, and we’re building Square to help sellers be visible everywhere customers are going.”
Focusing on technology to let restaurants focus on food
During its pilot phase, Square collaborated with Brooklyn-based specialty coffee brand, Partners Coffee, to refine how AI-powered search translates to the real world. For operators like Partners Coffee, the goal is not necessarily to become a hyper-digitized storefront, but to use digital efficiency to protect the physical experience of the café.
"We don’t view coffee as a transaction. For us, it is an opportunity to stop and reflect, a chance to relax, and a catalyst for connection," said Andrew Costaris, VP of digital at Partners Coffee, in a statement provided by Square to VentureBeat. "The last thing we want is for our technology solutions to work against this mission or complicate the customer experience. With agentic commerce and AI tools working in the background, we can have confidence knowing that our business is being discovered digitally and is constantly growing in efficiency, while our customers can continue to enjoy the lo-fi, exclusive coffee-first environment."
An AI-powered e-commerce ecosystem
The integration with ChatGPIT and the cloud is just the first step in Square’s broader agentic commerce strategy. The stakes are high: Industry data cited by the company indicates that more than 42% of consumers now use AI tools to assist with shopping tasks such as product search and comparison. By 2030, analysts estimate that agentic buyers could drive approximately $385 billion in U.S. ecommerce spending.
Most small and medium-sized businesses don’t have the developer team or budget necessary to create custom integrations for every new chatbot, voice assistant or AI hardware device that hits the market. Square wants to act as that universal connective tissue.
To that end, the company announced that it is actively working with Amazon to bring sellers to Alexa+ voice commerce experiences. Additionally, Square is participating in key regulatory and standards groups – including the AAIF Agent Commerce Working Group and the W3C Web Payments Working Group – to help AI agents and commerce platforms interact at scale.
Particularly notable is Square’s ongoing partnership with Google to co-develop the Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP) specification for local food ordering. This open standard is designed to allow agents and systems to communicate seamlessly throughout the commerce journey. From Google, UCP enables search and checkout in AI overviews in the Search and Gemini apps. As the UCP protocol expands globally, Square plans to implement these capabilities to keep its sellers front and center.
For the more than 4.5 million sellers currently using Square, the promise of agentic commerce is clear: a way to capture the next generation of Internet traffic without sacrificing the profit margins needed to keep their doors open. If Square can successfully deliver AI orders directly to a local business’s POS system — bypassing delivery aggregators’ 30% toll — it could signal a sea change in the way the restaurant industry navigates the modern digital economy.
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