Square is launching a new ChatGPT app and Claude plugin, which allows consumers to seamlessly discover restaurants and place orders directly within these AI platforms, and allows restaurants, in turn, to accept orders from users and their AI agents without any technical capabilities.
Even more useful for businesses, Square is processing these AI-powered transactions without charging traditional marketplace fees that have historically plagued the food and beverage sector.
However, Square is still collecting its Typical online ordering rates 3.3% plus $0.30 or 2.9% plus $0.30 per transaction for merchants subscribed to the Square Plus and Square Premium plans.
The system pulls directly from the live Square catalog, dynamically assigning items, prices, complex modifiers, and stock availability so that freelance agents never show out of stock inventory.
For enterprise testing and implementation verification, operators can manually audit their fingerprint using the "@" symbol to invoke the Order by Cash app plugin directly within ChatGPT or by connecting it through the Claude extensions directory.
Depending on the specific settings of the AI tool, customers can checkout entirely within the chat window via the Order by Cash app, or they will be seamlessly redirected to the merchant’s standard online ordering landing page with their chosen items and modifiers already fully populated in the basket.
A more affordable online ordering system for restaurants
To understand the significance of Square’s move, you have to look at the calculations restaurant owners will face in 2026. Third-party ordering and delivery apps have fundamentally altered the economics of the restaurant industry.
Currently, the major players (DoorDash, Uber Eats, and Grubhub) charge restaurants a hefty premium for visibility and compliance. These exorbitant fees exist primarily because delivery aggregators bundle the logistics costs of worker delivery fleets, platform marketing, and search location into a single revenue-sharing model.
Based on recent pricing structures, DoorDash It charges restaurants a 15% commission on its “Basic” delivery tier, which goes up to 25% for the “Plus” plan and 30% for its top-tier “Premier” visibility plan. Even pickup orders carry a 6% market fee.
Uber eats Similarly, it demands standard delivery market rates ranging from 20% on its “Lite” tier to 30% for premium placement, and pick-up orders cost up to 10% if the in-store price is not strictly validated.
grubhub echoes these fees, taking between 5% and 20% of the total order value depending on the marketing and delivery package chosen.
On top of these marketplace fees, platforms still add their own payment processing fees, typically between 2.5% and 3.05% plus a flat cent per order.
For an independent restaurant that might make only a 3% to 9% net profit on a good day, handing out 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 leveraging Square’s ChatGPT and Claude integrations, eligible sellers are automatically enrolled with no additional setup, no new APIs to create, and most importantly, no additional marketplace fees.
Instead of giving up a 30% cut to a delivery aggregator, a restaurant discovered through an AI agent only pays Square’s standard online transaction processing fee (which is typically around 2.9% + 30¢ per transaction on a standard plan, with no monthly marketplace fee attached).
Unlike delivery aggregators, Square’s pricing model does not natively subsidize a network of drivers. Instead, if an AI-generated order requires delivery, Square uses a white-label fulfillment network that charges a flat courier fee (often between $7 and $10 depending on distance) rather than taxing a percentage of the total basket size. Restaurants can choose to absorb this fixed delivery cost or pass it directly to the customer, fully protecting their food margins.
The result is an AI-powered discovery channel that works like direct and first-party orders.
How the technology works
The new Square integration is currently available to US-based food and beverage sellers who have an activated Square online ordering profile.
The system works completely in the background. Sellers manage their discoverability and business information (menus, hours of operation, stock levels, and pricing) directly through their existing Square Dashboard.
When a consumer asks ChatGPT or Claude a query like, “Find me a specialty coffee shop nearby with great service and order me a bag of your homemade roast,” the AI analyzes real-time data provided by Square.
Customers can browse results, make their selections and checkout using the Order by Cash app, all without leaving the chat interface.
The transaction is then instantly routed into the seller’s existing operational flow and appears in their Square point of sale (POS) and kitchen display system as an in-store order or directly on the website.
To help operators track returns on this new channel, the order origin is clearly labeled as an AI integration within Square’s backend reporting.
“Consumer behaviors and preferences are constantly evolving, and business owners can easily find themselves playing an impossible game of catch-up,” said Morgan Kuntze, global partnerships leader at Block, Square’s parent company. “Our investment in agent commerce aims to offload that responsibility by giving operators time, helping them connect with customers in their communities, and keeping them at the forefront of the industry. Modern commerce is moving at full speed, and we’re building Square to help sellers appear everywhere customers go.”
Focus on technology to allow restaurants to focus on food
During its pilot phase, Square collaborated with Partners Coffee, a Brooklyn-based specialty coffee brand, to refine how AI-powered discovery translates to the real world. For operators like Partners Coffee, the goal is not necessarily to become a hyper-digital storefront, but rather to use digital efficiency to protect the physical coffee shop experience.
"We don’t see coffee as something transactional. For us, it is an opportunity to pause and reflect, a chance to relax, and a catalyst for connection." said Andrew Costaris, vice president of digital at Partners Coffee, in a statement provided by Square to VentureBeat. "The last thing we want is for our technological solutions to go against this mission or complicate the customer experience. With agent commerce and AI tools running in the background, we have the confidence of knowing that our business is being digitally discovered and constantly growing in efficiency, while our customers can continue to enjoy a low-fidelity, specialty coffee-first environment."
An AI-powered e-commerce ecosystem
The integration with ChatGPT and Claude is just the first step in Square’s broader agent commerce strategy. The stakes are high: Industry data cited by the company indicates that more than 42% of consumers now use artificial intelligence tools to help with shopping tasks such as product discovery and comparison. By 2030, analysts project that buyer agents could generate nearly $385 billion in e-commerce spending in the United States.
Most small and medium-sized businesses simply don’t have the developer teams or budgets to create custom integrations for every new chatbot, voice assistant, or AI hardware device that hits the market. Square wants to serve 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 participates in leading regulatory and standards groups, including the AAIF Agentic Commerce Working Group and the W3C Web Payments Working Group, to shape how AI agents and commerce platforms interact at scale.
Particularly notable is Square’s current partnership with Google to co-develop the Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP) specification for local food orders. This open standard is designed to allow agents and systems to communicate seamlessly throughout the entire business journey. On Google’s side, UCP enables discovery and payment through AI overviews in Search and the Gemini app. As the UCP protocol expands globally, Square plans to implement these capabilities so its sellers remain front and center.
For the more than 4.5 million sellers currently using Square, the promise of agent 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 route AI orders directly to local businesses’ POS systems, bypassing delivery aggregators’ 30% toll, it could mark a massive shift in how the restaurant industry navigates the modern digital economy.
