A loyalty discount only counts now if the AI shopping for you can actually see it.
Synchrony, which issues store-branded credit cards for retailers including Amazon, Walmart and Lowe's, announced an enterprise partnership with OpenAI on August 17 to build what the companies are calling the next era of agentic commerce.
What Synchrony and Target Are Actually Building
The plan centers on a ChatGPT plugin letting shoppers browse promotional financing and partner offers from the Synchrony Marketplace without leaving the conversation. Synchrony's longer-term goal is making its store-branded cards discoverable anywhere agentic commerce happens, not just inside one chatbot.
Target got there first. Ask Microsoft Copilot for a product from Target, and it returns recommendations, then prompts the shopper to connect their Target account directly inside the chat.
Once connected, Target Circle discounts, free shipping and an extra 5% off for Circle Card holders apply automatically at checkout, all without the shopper opening a browser.
Target says it's the first mass retailer with loyalty-linked shopping live across three major AI platforms: Google's ecosystem, Microsoft Copilot, and ChatGPT.
The Traffic Numbers Behind the Rush
Target's own Q2 earnings give the strategy real weight. Digital traffic from external AI platforms is growing more than 3.5 times faster than the company's industry average, and non-merchandise revenue, including advertising and Target Circle 360 membership, grew more than 20% in the same quarter.
The mechanism behind that growth is simple. An AI agent comparing where to buy something can only factor in a loyalty discount, shipping perk or financing offer if that benefit is machine-readable.
Anything a shopper would otherwise have to click through by hand effectively doesn't exist to the agent making the recommendation.
PYMNTS Intelligence found more than 6 in 10 U.S. consumers used ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini for shopping in the past year, with power users replacing old shopping habits rather than simply layering AI on top of them.
Loyalty Has to Speak to the Algorithm Now
Sephora built a similar system in March, launching a ChatGPT app that pulls a customer's Beauty Insider rewards into the same conversation where they're asking for beauty advice.
Personalization is table stakes in loyalty programs now, according to Visa's Avery Miller and Braze's Kipp Johnson. The real differentiator is whether that value can be surfaced by an AI system in real time, not just stored in a static point balance a human reads in a rewards email.
The risk for any brand slower to make that shift is direct. If an AI agent decides where a purchase happens before a shopper ever opens a browser, a retailer or lender whose benefits aren't visible to that agent loses the sale to a competitor whose benefits are already built into the conversation.
What This Means for Miami
Miami-based BlockRun.AI is already building infrastructure for exactly this. It lets AI agents transact independently. No human has to click checkout.
Synchrony and Target are building the retail and financing side of that same shift.
The takeaway for Miami is simple. A loyalty program, financing offer or promotional rate that only lives in a website's fine print is now invisible to an AI shopping agent.
More shoppers are letting AI make the first pass at where to buy. If the AI can't see the deal, it might as well not exist.