Everyone is focused on how AI helps people discover products. But what happens after that? In this episode of Retailgentic, we go deep on the missing layer of agentic commerce: checkout, payments, and fulfillment. Because it turns out, the hardest part isn’t finding the product. It’s buying it.

Rye is building what they describe as the “Stripe for commerce.” It connects AI agents, apps, and platforms to merchants handling:

Checkout and order placement
Payment orchestration
Fulfillment across retailers like Amazon and Shopify

In short: if an AI agent decides what to buy, Rye helps it actually buy it.

Highlights

Checkout is the real bottleneck: Discovery is improving fast, but actually placing an order across fragmented systems is still incredibly hard.
Rye enables real AI purchasing: They connect agents to merchants, allowing products to be bought directly from platforms like Amazon.
Amazon is a critical unlock: Most bots are blocked, but Rye’s API-based approach allows real transactions to go through.
Protocols won’t solve everything: Even if UCP/ACP take off, long-tail merchants and major players won’t fully standardize.
B2B is the sleeper opportunity: Complex procurement decisions are a perfect fit for agent-driven commerce.
AI reduces returns: More context leads to better decisions, driving return rates extremely low.
We’re still early, but close: One breakout use case could flip massive volume into agentic commerce quickly.

Agentic commerce isn’t just about what gets recommended—it’s about what actually gets bought.

Timestamps:

02:00 — Meet Arjun Bhargava and Rye
04:00 — Founding story and early vision
08:00 — Contextual commerce → agentic commerce
11:00 — What Rye does (simple explanation)
14:00 — How AI agents place orders
18:00 — The rye.com story
22:00 — Amazon integration and why it matters
26:00 — Payments, tokenization, and infrastructure
30:00 — UCP vs ACP debate
35:00 — Why protocols won’t cover everything
40:00 — Where agentic commerce is heading
42:00 — B2B opportunity and procurement
46:00 — Real-world AI agent example
47:30 — Closing

👉 Connect with Arjun: https://www.linkedin.com/in/arjunbhargava/
👉 Learn more about Rye: rye.com

🧠 Want to stay ahead in AI commerce? Subscribe and follow along:
📰 Subscribe to the free Substack: retailgentic.ai
📺 Watch episodes on YouTube & Subscribe for updates: https://www.youtube.com/@Retailgentic