Square has launched a new ChatGPT app and a Claude plugin that let consumers discover restaurants and place orders directly within those AI platforms, while enabling restaurants to accept orders from users and their AI agents without needing technical work. Square says it will process these AI-driven transactions without charging the traditional marketplace commission fees that have historically weighed on the food and beverage industry.
At the same time, Square still applies its standard online processing fees: merchants on the Square Plus and Square Premium plans face either 3.3% + $0.30 or 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction.
How the system works
The integration pulls live data from a seller’s Square catalog and dynamically maps items, pricing, complex modifiers, and stock availability so autonomous agents never present out-of-stock inventory. Operators can manually audit their digital footprint: in ChatGPT the Order by Cash App plugin can be invoked with the “@” symbol, or the integration can be added via the Claude extension directory.
Depending on the AI tool configuration, customers can complete checkout entirely inside the chat window using Order by Cash App, or they will be seamlessly redirected to the merchant’s usual online ordering landing page with selected items and modifiers pre-populated in the basket.
Orders are routed into the seller’s existing operational flow and surface on Square Point of Sale (POS) and the Kitchen Display System just like in-store or direct-website orders. Square tags the origin of these orders as AI integration in its backend reporting so operators can track the channel’s return on investment.
Why this matters for restaurants
Third-party delivery and ordering apps have fundamentally changed restaurant economics. The article outlines prevailing pricing structures: DoorDash charges 15% on its “Basic” delivery tier, rising to 25% for “Plus” and 30% for “Premier”; DoorDash also applies a 6% marketplace fee to pickup orders. Uber Eats’ marketplace fees range from 20% on “Lite” up to 30% for premium placement, with pickup orders costing up to 10% if in-store pricing isn’t strictly validated. Grubhub takes between 5% and 20% depending on package. On top of these marketplace commissions, platforms typically add payment processing fees of roughly 2.5%–3.05% plus a fixed cent amount per order.
For an independent restaurant that might net 3%–9% profit on a good day, surrendering a 25%–30% cut on a $40 digital order can mean preparing food at a loss. Square’s integration targets that pain point: eligible sellers are auto-opted in with no extra setup, no new APIs to build, and crucially, no added marketplace fees.
Instead of giving an aggregator a percentage of the total basket, a restaurant discovered through an AI agent pays only Square’s standard online transaction processing fee (typically around 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction on standard plans). If an AI-generated order requires delivery, Square uses a white-label dispatch network that charges a flat courier fee — often around $7 to $10 depending on distance — rather than a percentage of the basket. Restaurants can choose to absorb or pass along that flat fee, preserving their food margins.
The upshot is an AI-powered discovery channel that behaves like first-party ordering.
Pilot program, partners and wider strategy
During its pilot phase, Square worked with Partners Coffee, a Brooklyn-based specialty coffee brand, to refine how AI-driven discovery translates to the physical world. Partners Coffee said the aim is not hyper-digitization but using digital efficiency to protect the cafe’s physical experience. Andrew Costaris, Digital VP at Partners Coffee, stated: “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're confident knowing that our business is being digitally discovered and is consistently growing in efficiency, while our customers can continue to enjoy a lo-fi, specialty coffee-first environment.”
Morgan Kuntze, Global Partnerships Lead at Block (Square’s parent company), commented: “Consumer behaviors and preferences are constantly evolving, and business owners can easily find themselves playing an impossible game of catch-up. Our investment into agentic commerce aims to offload that responsibility by giving operators time back, helping connect them with customers in their communities, and keeping them at the industry's cutting edge.”
The ChatGPT and Claude integrations are presented as the first step in Square’s broader agentic commerce strategy. The company cites industry data that more than 42% of consumers now use AI tools to assist with shopping tasks such as product discovery and comparison, and analysts project agentic shoppers could drive nearly $385 billion in U.S. ecommerce spending by 2030.
Square says it is working with Amazon to bring sellers into Alexa+ voice commerce experiences and is participating in standards and regulatory groups including the AAIF Agentic Commerce Working Group and the W3C Web Payments Working Group. Notably, Square is partnering with Google to co-develop the Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP) spec for local food ordering, an open standard intended to let agents and systems communicate across the commerce journey. On Google’s side, UCP enables discovery and checkout across AI Overviews in Search and the Gemini app; as UCP expands globally, Square plans to roll out these capabilities to its sellers.
For the more than 4.5 million sellers currently using Square, agentic commerce offers a way to capture the next generation of internet traffic without sacrificing the profit margins needed to stay in business. If Square can reliably route AI orders directly into local merchants’ POS systems and avoid the 30% aggregator toll, it could significantly change how the restaurant industry operates in the digital economy.
