Firmly Launches "Firmly Connect" — A No-Code Platform That Opens Agentic Commerce to Every Merchant

Firmly Officially Launches a Platform Dedicated to Agentic Commerce

Firmly Launches Firmly Connect, the First Agentic Commerce Platform

Firmly Launches Firmly Connect, the first agentic commerce platform that allows merchants to directly connect to any agent or agentic marketing channel without deploying any code.

On March 24, 2026, Firmly, a leader in agentic commerce (AI agent-mediated transactions), officially announced its new platform "Firmly Connect." The platform enables merchants to connect to any AI shopping agent or agentic marketing channel without writing a single line of code.

The announcement was made in Las Vegas, where it was also revealed that major retailers including Best Buy and Backcountry have already adopted the platform.

Background and Industry Trends

Agentic commerce is one of the most watched trends in the e-commerce industry in 2026. According to McKinsey's forecast, the global market could reach $3-5 trillion by 2030. Morgan Stanley's research estimates that AI agent-driven e-commerce spending in the U.S. alone could reach $190-385 billion.

However, merchants have faced significant barriers to entering this new channel. Traditional agentic commerce integrations required 3-12 months, a team of 12-18 members, and costs of $250,000-$500,000 per channel. This complexity has been a major entry barrier for many e-commerce merchants.

Firmly announced a partnership with Perplexity in March 2025 through a collaboration deal, enabling seamless shopping experiences within the AI search platform. It subsequently built a track record through deployments such as Furniture.com's adoption. Firmly Connect generalizes this technology into a "no-code platform anyone can use."

How Firmly Connect Works: Three Core Technologies

The onboarding process for Firmly Connect is remarkably simple. Merchants can start selling through agentic commerce in approximately 45 minutes through three steps: business verification, sales channel selection, and product catalog publishing. Integration costs are estimated to be 95% lower than traditional approaches.

At the platform's core is the "Firmly Agent Control Center" — a dashboard where merchants can manage which agents and channels they sell through, which products are available on each channel, and how products are displayed and transacted on AI shopping agents.

On the technical side, three core capabilities stand out.

Protocol Abstraction: Firmly abstracts multiple agent protocols including MCP, AP2, ACP, UCP, A2A, and KYA, eliminating the need for merchants to build integrations for each individual protocol. An industry consensus is forming that "MCP handles tool integration, A2A handles agent-to-agent communication, and UCP+AP2 handles e-commerce transactions" — and Firmly processes all of these at once.

Horizontal Infrastructure Layer: Operating as a layer above existing commerce platforms, it enables distribution to any channel through a single connection.

Merchant of Record Model: Merchants remain the selling entity, retaining full control over brand, customer relationships, first-party data, and pricing and inventory management.

Strategic Partnership with Aurus for Payment Infrastructure

Alongside the launch, Firmly also announced a strategic partnership with Aurus, an enterprise payment platform serving major retailers and grocery chains across more than 25 countries. This makes Aurus "the first omni-commerce gateway with native agentic commerce capabilities."

Aurus CEO Rahul Mutha summarized the partnership's value in three points: maintaining existing digital commerce's complex use cases and payment matrices; deploying agentic commerce experiences in weeks rather than months; and gaining agentic commerce learning experience without reprioritizing other internal projects.

Impact and Strategies for E-commerce Merchants

The launch of Firmly Connect means that entering agentic commerce is no longer a privilege reserved for large enterprises with significant technical capabilities.

Specific use cases include acquiring new customers through AI shopping agents (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google, etc.), expanding sales opportunities through emerging channels such as publishers and CTV, and enabling AI commerce readiness without modifying existing e-commerce infrastructure.

There are also considerations when evaluating adoption. While the Merchant of Record model ensures merchants retain control, how products are displayed and recommendation logic on AI agents depends on the channel side. Merchants need to establish ongoing monitoring of how their products are presented and recommended.

Getting started is available through Firmly's official website.

Conclusion

Firmly Connect has the potential to be an industry inflection point as the first platform to solve the "infrastructure problem" of agentic commerce. According to eMarketer data, retail spending through AI platforms is projected to reach $20.9 billion in 2026, nearly quadrupling year-over-year.

The key question going forward is how Firmly will coexist with existing commerce platforms' MCP adoption by Shopify, commercetools, and others. As platforms pursue direct agent integration, how many merchants middleware players like Firmly can capture will determine the competitive landscape of the agentic commerce market.