Restaurants can now accept orders placed directly from ChatGPT and Claude thanks to Square's new, low-fee, no setup integration

Square is launching a new ChatGPT app and Claude plugin, enabling consumers to discover restaurants and seamlessly place orders directly within these AI platforms — and allowing restaurants, in turn, to accept orders from users and their AI agents without any technical capabilities. Even more helpfully for businesses, Square is processing these AI-driven transactions without charging the traditional marketplace commission fees that have historically squeezed the food and beverage sector. However, Square is still charging its typical online ordering fees of 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 straight 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 verification, operators can manually audit their digital footprint by using the "@" symbol to invoke the Order by Cash App plugin directly within ChatGPT or connecting it via the Claude extension directory. Depending on the specific AI tool configuration, customers can either finalize checkout completely inside the chat window via 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 order system for restaurants To understand the significance of Square’s move, you have to look at the math that restaurant owners face in 2026. Third-party delivery and ordering 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 fulfillment. These exorbitant rates exist primarily because delivery aggregators bundle the logistical costs of gig-worker delivery fleets, platform marketing, and search placement into a single revenue-sharing model. According to recent pricing structures, DoorDash charges restaurants a 15% commission on its “Basic” delivery tier, which climbs to 25% for “Plus” and 30% for its top-tier “Premier” visibility plan. Even pickup orders carry a 6% marketplace fee. Uber Eats similarly exacts standard delivery marketplace fees ranging from 20% on its “Lite” tier up to 30% for premium placement, with pickup orders costing up to 10% if in-store pricing isn't strictly validated. Grubhub echoes these rates, taking between 5% and 20% of the total order value depending on the marketing and delivery package chosen. On top of these marketplace commissions, platforms still tack on their own payment processing fees—typically around 2.5% to 3.05% plus a fixed cent amount per order. For an independent restaurant that might only clear a 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 Claude integrations, eligible sellers are opted in automatically with no additional setup, no new APIs to build, and, crucially, zero added marketplace fees. Instead of surrendering a 30% cut to a 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 the delivery aggregators, Square’s fee model does not natively subsidize a driver network. Instead, if an AI-generated order requires delivery, Square utilizes a white-label dispatch network that charges a flat courier fee—often around $7 to $10 depending on distance—rather than taxing a percentage of the total basket size. Restaurants can choose to absorb this flat delivery cost or pass it directly to the customer, completely protecting their food margins. The result is an AI-powered discovery channel that functions like direct, first-party ordering. How the tech works Square’s new integration is currently live for U.S.-based Food & Beverage sellers who have an activated Square Online Ordering profile. The system operates entirely 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 prompts ChatGPT or Claude with a query like, “Find me a specialty coffee shop nearby with a great pour-over and order me a bag of their house roast,” the AI parses the real-time data provided by Square. Customers can browse the results, make their selections, and finalize the purchase using Order by Cash App, all without leaving the chat interface. The transaction is then routed instantly into the seller’s existing operational flow, popping up on their Square Point of Sale (POS) and Kitchen Display System just like an in-store or direct-website order. To help operators track the return on this new channel, the origin of the order is clearly tagged 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 Lead at Block, Square’s parent company. “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. Modern commerce is moving at a sprint, and we're building Square to help sellers appear everywhere customers are going.” Focusing on tech to let restaurants focus on food During its pilot phase, Square collaborated with Partners Coffee, a Brooklyn-based specialty coffee brand, to refine how AI-driven discovery translates into the real world. For operators like Partners Coffee, the goal isn't necessarily to become a hyper-digitized storefront, but rather to use digital efficiency to protect the physical experience of the cafe. "We don't see coffee as transactional. To us, it's an opportunity to pause and reflect, a chance to unwind, and a catalyst for connection," noted Andrew Costaris, Digital VP 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'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." An AI-driven e-commerce ecosystem The integration with ChatGPT and Claude is only 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 like product discovery and comparison. By 2030, analysts project that agentic shoppers could drive nearly $385 billion in U.S. ecommerce spending. Most small and mid-size businesses simply do not have the developer teams or budgets required to build 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 it is actively working with Amazon to bring sellers into Alexa+ voice commerce experiences. Furthermore, Square is participating in major 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 ongoing partnership with Google to co-develop the Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP) spec for local food ordering. This open standard is designed to allow agents and systems to seamlessly communicate across the entire commerce journey. On Google’s end, UCP enables discovery and checkout across AI Overviews in Search and the Gemini app. As the UCP protocol expands globally, Square plans to roll out these capabilities so that its sellers remain 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 required to keep their doors open. If Square can successfully route AI orders directly to local business's POS systems—sidestepping the 30% toll of the delivery aggregators—it could mark a massive shift in how the restaurant industry navigates the modern digital economy.