Google Tests In-Chat Checkout With Flipkart on Gemini and AI Mode in India

Google has begun testing a direct purchase path for Flipkart products inside Gemini and AI Mode in India, a move that pushes the company's AI tools past product discovery and into the transaction itself. The test, confirmed by people familiar with the matter and an experience reviewed by TechCrunch, marks a concrete step toward monetizing AI-driven shopping queries at scale.

Select users are seeing a "Buy" button on certain Flipkart listings within Gemini and AI Mode. Tapping it routes them into a Flipkart-branded checkout flow without exiting the AI interface. The pilot is narrow by design. It covers a limited set of users and product categories, primarily smartphones, electronics, and mobile accessories, according to the people who spoke with TechCrunch. Other users still see standard Flipkart listings with no buy option at all.

Google intends to widen the rollout later in October, timed deliberately ahead of India's festive shopping season. That timing is not incidental. Diwali-adjacent sales periods are the single biggest revenue events for Indian e-commerce, and both Flipkart and Amazon typically launch their largest promotions during this window. A functioning AI checkout heading into that period gives Google a live test bed with real transaction volume at stake.

A Google spokesperson offered a measured response when asked about the test, saying the company is "always testing new features and experiences to help people discover and connect with businesses more easily," and adding that it runs regular experiments without further details to share. That is standard Google messaging for early-stage pilots, and it leaves the commercial terms, success metrics, and technical architecture of the test largely unaddressed.

The mechanics behind the button

What makes this test notable is what it is not. Google has already built and publicized a more ambitious commerce framework: the Universal Commerce Protocol, introduced earlier this year as an open standard meant to let AI agents handle the full shopping journey, including a Google-hosted checkout. That system, as Google described it at NRF 2026, would let shoppers complete purchases through Gemini and AI Mode without ever touching a retailer's own checkout page. UCP was later expanded to let users transfer items to a retailer's site to finish a purchase there instead.

The Flipkart test observed by TechCrunch follows neither model precisely. It hands the user off to a Flipkart-branded checkout, not a Google-hosted one, and it is unclear what protocol or backend is powering that handoff. That ambiguity matters for anyone trying to size this opportunity. A Google-hosted checkout keeps Google closer to the transaction, with more control over data, attribution, and potentially fees. A retailer-branded flow, even one surfaced natively in an AI chat window, is closer to a smart referral mechanism than a full commerce platform.

Earlier this month, Google named Flipkart among the merchants partnering on what it calls "agentic" shopping experiences in India, though it did not disclose specifics of this particular test at the time. The relationship between the two companies runs deeper than a typical retail integration. Google invested roughly $350 million in Flipkart in 2024 as part of a funding round led by Walmart, taking a minority stake in the e-commerce company. That financial tie sits alongside the technology partnership now playing out in Gemini and AI Mode, and it is a detail investors should weigh when assessing how neutral or preferential this integration might be relative to competitors.

The competitive backdrop is straightforward. India is the world's second-largest internet market, with more than a billion subscribers, and Flipkart and Amazon fight hard for that user base. Notably, in the experience TechCrunch reviewed, Amazon listings appeared alongside Flipkart's in Gemini and AI Mode, but without any buy button. Whether that gap reflects a technical limitation, a negotiation still in progress, or a deliberate sequencing choice by Google is not disclosed. It is worth watching whether Amazon gains equivalent integration before the festive season, or whether Flipkart retains a first-mover edge inside Google's AI surfaces.

This is not an isolated experiment in the industry. OpenAI has also been layering commerce capabilities into its products, including work with Walmart disclosed last year, and the broader trend across large AI platforms is a shift from answering shopping questions to closing the sale directly. For Google, embedding transactions into Gemini and AI Mode is a logical extension of its search dominance, but it also raises the stakes on execution. A buy button that fails, confuses, or under-delivers during peak shopping season carries reputational cost well beyond the pilot group.

The Bottom Line

This test is small in scope but strategically significant. Google is not yet running its own hosted checkout for Flipkart transactions, it is testing a retailer-branded handoff, and the technology powering it remains undisclosed. That leaves open questions about margin capture, data ownership, and whether this evolves into the fuller Universal Commerce Protocol vision Google outlined earlier this year.

For investors tracking Alphabet and Walmart, the near-term signal is modest: a limited India pilot ahead of festive sales, with a broader rollout targeted for October. The larger signal is directional. Google is actively converting AI Mode and Gemini from discovery tools into transaction layers, and its existing equity stake in Flipkart gives it a built-in partner to iterate with before extending similar mechanics to less-aligned retailers like Amazon. Watch whether the October rollout expands product categories meaningfully, and whether Amazon or other merchants gain comparable buy-button access before the festive season peaks.