Buy a travel eSIM with an AI assistant: ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and shopping agents

You can ask an AI assistant for a travel eSIM and let it do the choosing, or even the buying. ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Copilot and Meta's Muse all help people shop now, and some of them can pay on a website for you once you approve the total. With Wigoo, an assistant reads our real plans and prices through a public connector, gives you a link that opens the right plan, and the purchase needs only an email: no account, no password, no CAPTCHA.

This guide explains what each big assistant can do today, how agents pay, what an assistant should ask you before it buys, and what Wigoo does for assistants. Every number has its source at the bottom of the page.

Why people now ask an assistant

The assistants have become one of the main places people start. These are the latest figures each company has published:

OpenAI counts weekly users and Google monthly ones, so the two are not directly comparable. We found no official user counts for Claude, Perplexity or Grok.

Travel is moving the same way. Adobe measured traffic from AI assistants to US travel sites growing 194% year on year in May 2026, and more than 2,215% since October 2024. In its survey, 86% of travellers who planned with an assistant said it improved the experience. AI visitors still convert 28% less often than other visitors to travel sites, which tells you something too: people ask the assistant, then go and buy where they trust the shop.

In shopping overall, Salesforce counted AI and agents behind $262 billion, or 20%, of online sales in the 2025 holiday season, and Morgan Stanley found that about 23% of Americans had bought something through AI in the past month.

The big assistants and what they can buy

Not every assistant buys the same way. Some only recommend, some check out inside the chat at partner stores, and some drive a browser and pay on any website. Here is where each one stands, and what it can do with Wigoo.

Apple has not announced an assistant that buys on other websites, as far as we could find.

The pattern is clear. Every assistant can already send you to the right page. The ones that act in a browser (ChatGPT agent, Claude in Chrome, Muse, Grok Bot) can also finish the purchase, and they all stop to ask before paying.

How agents pay

An agent should never see your card number, and none of the new systems let it. They give the agent a token or a virtual card limited to one shop and one amount, which you approve.

Wigoo's checkout runs on Stripe and accepts Link, cards, Apple Pay and Google Pay, so an agent that pays with Link or a virtual card can complete it today. Paying inside the assistant without opening the website, with Stripe's Shared Payment Tokens, is the next step we will build when assistants ask for it.

Connecting assistants to shops is done more and more with the Model Context Protocol (MCP), the open standard Anthropic published in 2024 and gave to the Agentic AI Foundation in December 2025. By then there were over 10,000 active public MCP servers, and ChatGPT, Gemini, Microsoft Copilot, Cursor and VS Code all supported it. Wigoo's MCP server is one of them.

How big this will get

Forecasts disagree, and they measure different things, but they all point the same way:

These are forecasts. What has already been measured is smaller and still large: Adobe saw generative AI traffic to US retail sites grow 693.4% over the 2025 holidays.

What travellers trust, and what they do not

People like assistants for planning more than for paying. In Accenture's 2026 survey of 25,590 consumers in 16 countries, 32% would let an agent decide a purchase, but only 12% are open to it deciding when payment is involved. In an Expedia Group and YouGov survey of over 5,700 adults in the US, UK and India, 66% said they would not trust an AI assistant to buy or book anything, and 68% prefer to book with a travel brand they trust.

That is why Wigoo keeps the person in control even when an agent does the work:

• The assistant links to getwigoo.com. The purchase happens on our site, with our prices, and you can check the page before you pay.
• You approve the amount. The price is calculated by our server at checkout, in your currency, and the agents above all ask before paying.
• The email is yours. The eSIM and the receipt go to the address typed at checkout, and you can sign in later with that email to see the eSIM and top it up.
• The agent gets no login. The purchase creates no password and no session, and without the email code it cannot spend Wigoo credit or saved cards.

Three ways to buy a Wigoo eSIM with an assistant

With the connector, the answers come from our live catalogue:

destinations

212

countries and territories

201

regional plans, the widest covers 127 countries

11

mobile networks

227

cheapest plan

$2.49

What to tell the assistant

The better the brief, the better the plan. Tell it:

• Where and how long. "Japan for 10 days", or "Italy, France and Spain for three weeks", where a regional plan may cover the whole trip.
• How you use your phone. Maps and messages need little; video, calls and hotspot need much more. How much data apps use has the numbers.
• Fixed or unlimited. If you would rather not count, ask for an unlimited day pass.
• Your currency. Prices come in 39 currencies.
• Who it is for. If it is for a parent or a friend, give their email: buying an eSIM for someone else explains the rest.

Prices today for a few common trips, in your currency:

What a good assistant checks before it pays

An installed eSIM cannot be reused and may no longer be refundable, so these questions come first. If your assistant does not ask them, answer them anyway.

Why travellers need an eSIM at all

UN Tourism counted about 1.52 billion international tourist arrivals in 2025, and the alternative is still roaming, which costs far more than a local plan: compare what carriers charge. eSIMs are growing fast from a small base. The GSMA puts eSIM smartphone penetration at 5% at the end of 2025 and expects 10% by the end of 2026, and Juniper Research estimates travel eSIM revenue at $1.8 billion in 2025, on the way to $8.7 billion in 2030. New to eSIMs? Start with what an eSIM is.

Sources

1. OpenAI, A milestone in expanding access to AI, 2026-08-31
2. OpenAI, Introducing ChatGPT agent, 2025-07-17
3. Stripe, Stripe powers Instant Checkout in ChatGPT and releases Agentic Commerce Protocol codeveloped with OpenAI, 2025-09-29
4. OpenAI, Powering Product Discovery in ChatGPT, 2026-03-24
5. Google, More than 1 billion people are using the Gemini app every month., 2026-08-11
6. Google, Q2 2026 earnings call: Remarks from our CEO, 2026-07-22
7. Google Cloud, Powering AI commerce with the new Agent Payments Protocol (AP2), 2025-09-16
8. Google, New tech and tools for retailers to succeed in an agentic shopping era, 2026-01-11
9. Google, An intelligent new shopping cart, 2026-10-15
10. Anthropic, Piloting Claude in Chrome, 2025-08-25
11. Stripe, Stripe and Anthropic help entrepreneurs run their business inside Claude Duet, 2026-10-21
12. Microsoft, Microsoft Fiscal Year 2026 First Quarter Earnings Conference Call, 2025-10-29
13. Microsoft Advertising, Conversations that Convert: Copilot Checkout and Brand Agents, 2026-01-08
14. Perplexity, Shopping that puts you first, 2025-11-25
15. PayPal, PayPal and Perplexity Launch Instant Buy Ahead of Black Friday, 2025-11-25
16. Meta, Third Quarter 2025 Results Conference Call, 2025-10-29
17. Stripe, Stripe helps Muse, Meta's new personal AI agent, shop across the internet with Link, 2026-09-08
18. TechCrunch, Meta says Muse has over 10M users, with shopping a top activity, 2026-10-21
19. Amazon, Amazon.com Announces Fourth Quarter Results, 2026-02-05
20. xAI, Grok Bot Changelog, 2026-10-11
21. Stripe, Giving agents the ability to pay, 2026-04-29
22. Visa, The Future is Here: Visa Announces New Era of Commerce Featuring AI, 2025-04-30
23. Mastercard, Mastercard unveils Agent Pay, pioneering agentic payments technology to power commerce in the age of AI, 2025-04-29
24. Anthropic, Donating MCP to the Agentic AI Foundation, 2025-12-09
25. Morgan Stanley, Here Come the Shopping Bots, 2025-12-08
26. McKinsey, The agentic commerce opportunity: How AI agents are ushering in a new era for consumers and merchants, 2025-10-17
27. Bain & Company, 2030 Forecast: How Agentic AI Will Reshape US Retail, 2025-12-17
28. Gartner, Gartner Unveils Top Predictions for IT Organizations and Users in 2026 and Beyond, 2025-10-21
29. Salesforce, Holiday Season Rakes in Record $1.29T for Retailers, Salesforce Data Shows, 2026-01-08
30. Adobe, Adobe: Holiday Shopping Season Drove a Record $257.8 Billion Online with Consumers Embracing Generative AI Tools, 2026-01-07
31. Adobe, Adobe report: AI traffic to travel sites soars nearly 200% as AI visitors now outperform traditional sources., 2026-06-17
32. Accenture, Accenture Consumer Pulse Research 2026, 2026-01
33. Expedia Group, Expedia Group Reveals 'The AI Trust Gap': Travelers Embrace AI for Planning but Rely on Trusted Brands to Book, 2026-04-14
34. UN Tourism, International tourist arrivals up 4% in 2025 reflecting strong travel demand around the world, 2026-01-20
35. GSMA, eSIM mass market deployment moves from forecast to fact, 2026-05-01
36. Juniper Research, Travel eSIMs Surge as Roaming Alternative - Up 85% in 2025, 2025-10-07
37. Juniper Research, Travel eSIM Market: 2025-2030, 2025-10-13

Quick answers

Can ChatGPT buy an eSIM for me?

ChatGPT can find and compare Wigoo plans and give you a link that opens the right one, and ChatGPT agent can go through the checkout on getwigoo.com, asking your permission before it buys. You need only an email, no account.

Can Claude buy an eSIM for me?

Claude can read Wigoo's plans through our connector in Claude's directory and give you a plan link, and Claude in Chrome can go through the checkout in the browser, asking you before it buys. The checkout needs only an email.

Which AI assistants can pay on a website?

The ones that drive a browser or carry a payment wallet: ChatGPT agent, Claude in Chrome, Meta's Muse and Grok Bot, among others. They all ask the person to approve the total before paying.

Is it safe to let an AI agent buy an eSIM?

The agent never sees your card number when it pays with a token or a virtual card such as Link's, and it asks you to approve the amount. The purchase happens on getwigoo.com, at the price our server calculates at checkout, and the eSIM goes to the email you choose.

Do I need the Wigoo connector to use an assistant?

No. Any assistant can answer from our public pages and link to a destination. The connector makes the answer exact: it reads every plan and price live and gives a link that opens the chosen plan.

Will assistants be able to pay without opening the website?

That is the next step. Stripe's Shared Payment Tokens let an assistant pay a shop inside the chat, and we will add it to Wigoo's connector when assistants ask for it.