Microsoft Copilot Shopping for Brands: The Complete Guide

Microsoft Copilot sells on a merchant's behalf from a Microsoft Merchant Center feed and the open web, and since January 2026 it can complete the purchase inside the conversation. Microsoft has documented the feed path, the eligibility rules and the fee position; this guide walks that path and drops every number we could not source.

To appear in Copilot shopping suggestions, give Microsoft a product feed through a Microsoft Merchant Center account; organic results draw on the web and that feed. To sell inside Copilot, add store settings and UCP attributes for Copilot Checkout; you are the merchant of record (Microsoft Advertising, 2026).

Last updated: 13 October 2026.

What Copilot shopping is

Microsoft Copilot runs across Windows, Microsoft 365, Bing and the standalone Copilot app and site. When a shopper asks what to buy, the answer is built from two inputs Microsoft names: the open web and "a merchant's feed in the Microsoft Merchant Center" (Microsoft Advertising, 2026). A merchant with no feed can still be cited from its website; a feed gives Copilot structured price, availability and attributes.

Since 8 January 2026 the answer can end in a purchase. Copilot Checkout "lets shoppers complete purchases directly inside Microsoft Copilot" and "keeps the entire decision-to-purchase flow in one place" (Microsoft Advertising, 2026). It launched with PayPal, Shopify and Stripe as partners and Urban Outfitters, Anthropologie, Ashley Furniture and Etsy sellers as named merchants (Microsoft Advertising, 8 January 2026). Today it is "available on Copilot.com and the Copilot mobile app"; Microsoft has not said when it reaches Copilot in Windows or Microsoft 365. Shopper-side view: our Copilot surface page.

How to get your catalog into Copilot (Microsoft Merchant Center)

Microsoft's agentic commerce page states the requirements: "To onboard to Copilot Checkout, you must have an MMC account" and "A product feed is required to power product discovery and checkout" (Microsoft Advertising, 2026). In order:

1. Create a Microsoft Merchant Center store. In Microsoft Advertising, "click Tools > Microsoft Merchant Center. Click on Create store and provide the requested store details" (Microsoft Learn, 2026). You do not need to run ads to hold a store.
2. Build and submit the product feed. "Create a product catalog, and then submit the catalog feed via FTP/SFTP or the Content API" (Microsoft Learn, 2026).
3. Check eligibility for checkout. "Only English-language merchants who sell to US buyers are eligible" (Microsoft Advertising, 2026). Outside that, steps 1 and 2 still feed organic results; the checkout does not appear.
4. Add store settings for Copilot Checkout. Microsoft's first getting-started step is "Add new store settings in Microsoft Merchant Center" (Microsoft Advertising, 2026). Non-Shopify merchants apply through Microsoft's form (Microsoft Advertising, 8 January 2026).
5. Update the feed with UCP attributes. Microsoft's second step is "Update your feed with attributes needed for UCP"; "UCP is a complementary layer to Merchant Center feeds that turns product data into executable commerce actions" (Microsoft Advertising, 2026). UCP is the Universal Commerce Protocol Google co-developed with Shopify, Etsy, Wayfair, Target and Walmart (Google, 11 January 2026); the same attributes serve Google's checkout, so this step is done once.
6. Connect payments. Copilot Checkout runs on PayPal, Shopify checkout or a Stripe Shared Payment Token processed through your own provider (Microsoft Advertising, 8 January 2026). Your gateway, your merchant account, your refund flow.
7. Shopify stores: confirm the defaults. "Shopify merchants have been automatically enrolled (with controls in Shopify admin)" (Microsoft Advertising, 2026). Shopify's side: "You don't need to do anything for your products to be discovered by Microsoft Copilot through Shopify Catalog", and "When your store is eligible, purchasing through Microsoft Copilot's direct checkout is active by default" for stores selling to US customers with policies completed (Shopify Help Center, 2026). Both switches are under Sales channels > Agentic > Microsoft Copilot; after removing Catalog access "it can take up to 7 days before your product data is no longer being shared."

A Merchant Center feed still matters for Shopify stores: "Although MMC is not required to sell through Copilot Checkout, product feeds from MMC help inform organic Copilot results" (Microsoft Advertising, 8 January 2026). Catalog gets you into checkout; the feed helps you into the answer.

What Copilot reads, and what nobody has published

Microsoft documents its inputs, the web and the Merchant Center feed, and no ranking method for which product a Copilot answer names. No other operator has published one except OpenAI; we lined them up in AI shopping assistants: the 2026 map.

An earlier version of this guide carried a weight table and shopper-mix figures from our own cohort. We withdrew them: the sample was not measured in a way we can publish. What stands is sourced: a complete, current feed is a stated input, and plain-language attributes (size, material, pack count, compatibility) are what every assistant filters on. Our catalog optimisation guide covers the writing.

The work-context hypothesis

Copilot runs inside Windows and Microsoft 365, so many brands assume its shopper is at work: office supplies, professional gear, bulk sizes. That is a reasonable hypothesis and an unmeasured one; Microsoft has published no shopper mix, and we no longer print ours.

Treat it as a cheap test. If part of your catalog is sensible in quantity and fits a professional use, make pack sizes, volume pricing and certifications explicit fields in the feed, then watch Copilot-attributed orders in your channel attribution or server-side events. The same work serves Amazon Business and Amazon Q, so nothing is wasted if Copilot proves consumer-shaped.

Copilot Checkout: the participation decision

Who is the merchant? "You are the merchant of record. Copilot does not become merchant of record" (Microsoft Advertising, 2026). In January's wording: "You own the transaction, the customer data, and the relationship."

What does it cost? "Today, Microsoft does not take a commission or affiliate fee" (Microsoft Advertising, 2026). On Shopify: "There are no fees associated with selling in Microsoft Copilot's direct checkout. You pay only your standard payment processing fees" (Shopify Help Center, 2026).

What do you lose? The pageview. "Google Analytics and custom pixels won't fire in Microsoft Copilot's direct checkout" (Shopify Help Center, 2026), so the order appears in your order system, not GA4. See AI shopping agents for how each agent's payment reaches your gateway.

Opt out if a subscription, configurator or compliance step needs the shopper on your site. Otherwise the checkout has to be finishable by an agent: variant-level price and stock the feed matches, a guest path, no captcha at the pay step. That is the work behind enable agentic checkout; an MCP server lets tool-calling agents read stock and price directly (our MCP docs).

Measuring Copilot traffic

Orders completed inside Copilot never load your site, so browser analytics cannot see them (Shopify Help Center, 2026). Click-throughs may arrive without a referrer and be filed as Direct. The gap is brand-specific. For MyMuse, across all AI surfaces, GA4 showed ₹11.5K/mo of AI revenue against ₹81.2K/mo actual, 7× hidden, over a 12-month attribution window (Tru Commerce case study). That is one brand, not a Copilot figure. Method: dark agentic commerce traffic.

What we see going wrong

• No Microsoft Merchant Center feed at all. Brands that dropped Bing Shopping have no feed for Copilot to read; organic results fall back to the website.
• Feed without checkout attributes. Store settings and UCP attributes are two separate steps in Microsoft's list (Microsoft Advertising, 2026). Many feeds have neither.
• Shopify defaults unexamined. Catalog access and direct checkout are on by default for eligible stores (Shopify Help Center, 2026). Decide on purpose, either way.
• Copying the ChatGPT playbook. ChatGPT takes a CSV or JSON feed under the Agentic Commerce Protocol (OpenAI Developers, 2026); Copilot takes a Merchant Center feed with UCP attributes. One catalog, two feeds.

Where Copilot fits in your surface strategy

Copilot is one of six assistant surfaces that can name your product before a shopper reaches your site; the sequencing is in the six AI agents your brand needs to show up in. Its setup is closest to Google's: a Merchant Center feed plus UCP attributes, merchant of record stays with you, no platform fee documented. If you have done the Gemini feed work, Copilot is the shorter second job.

Where Tru Commerce fits

We have run this on Gray Porter and a group of US DTC brands: we made the product pages and checkout readable and finishable by an agent, then placed a real Muse order on the store. On measurement, MyMuse is the reference: GA4 showed ₹11.5K/mo of AI revenue, the real figure was ₹81.2K/mo, 7× hidden. If you want your Microsoft Merchant Center feed, checkout settings and attribution checked against what Microsoft documents, book a demo.