If you sell on Shopify, there’s nothing to apply for. Microsoft’s own Copilot Checkout page says Shopify merchants “have been automatically enrolled” and that there are “no additional onboarding steps required”. Shopify sends your products to Copilot through Shopify Catalog, the product feed it shares with ChatGPT, Copilot and other AI assistants.
So the real question isn’t how to join. It’s whether your store qualifies, and whether you can see that it’s working. That’s what this page covers, plus the route for stores that aren’t on Shopify.
For how Copilot picks products once you’re in, see our Copilot shopping overview.
If you got here searching for merchant.engagecopilot.com: that site belongs to Engage CoPilot, a separate store-building company. It isn’t Microsoft’s, and signing up there won’t put your products in Microsoft Copilot.
On Shopify: qualify, don’t apply
Shopify says you don’t need to do anything for Copilot to find your products through Shopify Catalog. If your store is eligible, Copilot’s in-chat checkout is switched on by default too.
Here’s what has to be true first. Shopify lists four requirements for selling on Copilot:
- You sell to customers in the United States.
- Your products are eligible for Shopify Catalog. That means the store is on the Starter plan or higher and not password-protected, and each product has a title, at least one image and a price above zero. There’s one exception on plans: a store on the Agentic plan can still be included through agentic storefronts, even if it hasn’t published its online store on a paid plan. The full requirements also cover account standing and excluded categories, and our Shopify Catalog requirements guide walks through each one.
- You’ve agreed to the Shopify Agentic Storefronts Supplemental Terms of Service.
- Your Terms of service, Privacy policy and Return and refund policy are filled in under Settings > Policies.
That last one is easy to miss. Shopify asks for these policies in Settings > Policies specifically, not as regular pages you built yourself and linked in your footer.
If a product of yours shows “Your product is being reviewed for Shopify Catalog eligibility”, that’s this qualifying step in progress. Our guide to what that message means explains what to check while you wait.
What changes when Copilot checkout is on
When checkout is on, a US shopper can click Buy in Copilot and pay in a Shopify-powered checkout without visiting your site. Shopify says there are no extra fees, just your normal payment processing. Microsoft says it takes no commission today and that you stay the merchant of record.
A few things don’t come along for the ride. Shopify lists these as unsupported in Copilot’s checkout:
- products sold only as subscriptions (one-time purchase still works if you offer both), bundles, customizable products and B2B-only products;
- Google Analytics and custom pixels, which won’t fire (only Shopify’s server-side “started” and “completed” events do);
- local delivery, pickup in store and pickup points;
- making customers sign in before checkout.
Upsell, loyalty, trust-badge and custom-field blocks might not show either. If your checkout relies on an app to collect something important, like a gift message or a delivery date, decide whether that product should be bought in Copilot at all.
One more detail worth acting on: Shopify asks you to keep any legal disclosures in the first 6,000 characters of the product description. If your warnings live at the bottom of a long description, move them up.
Deciding which Copilot settings to keep
Everything lives in Sales channels > Agentic. By default, a setting called Allow Shopify to manage for me is on, which means every AI channel gets your products, direct checkout is on, and you’re enrolled in new channels automatically.
To change anything for Copilot alone, Shopify’s steps are: turn off Allow Shopify to manage for me, click Microsoft Copilot, then switch Shopify Catalog access or Direct checkout on or off, and save.
| You want | Shopify Catalog access | Direct checkout |
|---|---|---|
| Found in Copilot, bought in Copilot | On | On |
| Found in Copilot, bought on your site | On | Off |
| Out of Copilot’s Shopify feed | Off | Off (switches off with it) |
Two things to know before you switch anything off. Shopify says it can take up to 7 days for your products to stop being shared. And Copilot can still find your products on the open web, the way a search engine does. To hide a product from AI channels completely, Shopify points you to the Unlisted product status, which also hides it from Google and your own store search.
Our agentic storefronts guide covers these settings across every channel.
Not on Shopify? Three ways in
Microsoft’s Copilot Checkout page lists three onboarding routes for everyone else. All three are for English-language merchants who sell to US buyers in US dollars.
| Route | What you need | Who does the work |
|---|---|---|
| Microsoft Merchant Center | A Merchant Center account and a “UCP-compliant feed” | You, inside Merchant Center |
| PayPal (Store Sync) | A PayPal integration; Microsoft links a form to speak to PayPal’s sales team | PayPal, with you |
| Stripe (Agentic Commerce Suite) | Stripe’s agentic selling setup | Stripe, with you |
Microsoft says that if you come in through PayPal or Stripe, there’s no extra work to do with Microsoft. It also says that, for now, you can have only one payment partner for Copilot Checkout: by default, whichever one finishes onboarding first, though you can ask Microsoft to switch.
If you go the Merchant Center route, Microsoft’s UCP readiness page says what to set up under Store settings > UCP settings:
- Return policy: your policy URL, the return window (a number of days, lifetime or no returns) and any restocking fee.
- Customer support: at minimum, a link to your contact page or help center.
- Product warnings, if your products legally need them, added to the feed as
consumer_message_typeandconsumer_message_content.
Microsoft’s Copilot Checkout page adds that the feed needs a few extra attributes for checkout: whether each product is eligible for in-chat checkout, any product warnings, and a unique Merchant Item ID.
A Merchant Center feed still helps Shopify stores be found
Here’s the part that’s easy to skip. Microsoft says it uses “information found on the web and from a merchant’s feed in the Microsoft Merchant Center” to decide what shows up in Copilot’s regular, unpaid results.
So even on Shopify, Copilot isn’t only reading Shopify Catalog. Your public product pages count. If you already run a Merchant Center feed for Microsoft Shopping ads, keep it in step with Shopify: same price, same stock, same product facts. Two copies of a product that disagree give an assistant a reason to trust neither.
And whatever the route, Microsoft says the details Copilot shows a shopper, like sizes, return windows and review summaries, “depend on what the merchant provides”. If your return window isn’t written down anywhere Copilot can read it, the shopper doesn’t see it.
How to tell it worked
Nobody emails you when your products reach Copilot. Here’s how to check, in order:
- Your store is in the catalog. In Sales channels > Agentic, next to Sources > Shopify Catalog, Shopify shows a product count when the store is eligible, or an Ineligible warning you can click for the reason.
- The count looks right. If it’s well below your number of active products, some products are failing a rule. Our requirements guide goes through them product by product.
- Copilot is switched on. Under Microsoft Copilot, Shopify Catalog access is on, and direct checkout is set the way you want.
- Your three policies are filled in under Settings > Policies.
- Your products show up in the search preview. In the Agentic section, search for a product the way a shopper would, then click a channel name to see how the result might look there. Shopify calls the preview “a directional signal, not an exact prediction”. Our guide to the Agentic tab explains how to read it.
- Copilot finds you by name. Ask Copilot for one of your products by its exact name. It’s the easiest test to pass, so if this one fails, stop and recheck steps 1 to 4.
- Sales show up in the right report. Shopify’s Agentic section has reports per AI channel: sales, orders, store sessions and conversion. Use those for Copilot, because Google Analytics doesn’t fire on purchases made inside Copilot’s checkout.
If steps 1 to 4 pass and you still never appear, you’re in, but you’re not being picked. That’s a product data problem, not a sign-up problem. Microsoft says Copilot weighs the shopper’s prompt, “likely engagement”, your merchant data and “other factors”, so the part you control is how clearly your product information answers what shoppers ask.
Your next step
Open Sales channels > Agentic today and write down three things: the product count next to Shopify Catalog, whether Microsoft Copilot is on, and whether all three store policies are filled in. If any of the three is wrong, that’s your fix for this week. If all three are right, ask Copilot for your best seller by name and see what comes back.