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AI surfaces

AI surfaces — conversational AI products, AI-driven search and answer engines, AI assistants embedded in apps — are where users increasingly ask to buy things. The destination is the AI surface itself: a chat thread, a generative search result, an in-app assistant. The agent responds to a purchase intent by calling commerce APIs in the background and presenting the result back inside the conversation.

The Firmly platform turns any AI surface into a transactional one without per-merchant integration on the AI surface’s side.

​​ What this category covers

AI surfaces as a destination category includes:

Surface type What it does
Conversational AI products Chat-based AI products where commerce shows up alongside other interaction types
AI answer engines and generative search Search surfaces where results need to become transactable, not just informational
In-app AI assistants AI integrated inside another product (workplace, productivity, lifestyle) that needs commerce as one capability
Autonomous agents AI that completes purchases on the user’s behalf with explicit consent and constraints — see Agentic Pay

​​ Why AI surfaces are a Firmly destination

Conversational commerce introduces challenges an AI surface usually doesn’t want to solve in-house:

  • Multi-merchant discovery — a single conversation might span products from many merchants; one Firmly integration reaches all of them, with no per-merchant build on the AI surface’s side.
  • Conversation-aware error handling — when the cart is blocked (out of stock, address invalid, payment declined), the agent needs to recover gracefully inside the conversation, not break the user back to a form.
  • Consent and disclosure — the user has to know what they’re authorizing, especially for autonomous purchases. See Consent & Disclosure.
  • Protocol heterogeneity — different agent stacks speak different protocols. Firmly speaks UCP, MCP, ACP, and direct REST.
  • Payment for cardholder-not-present — when an autonomous agent purchases on the user’s behalf, network-token-based mandate payment is essential. See Agentic Pay.

​​ Which Firmly solutions apply

Solution When to use it
Agentic Commerce The primary solution for AI-surface destinations. Designed end-to-end for AI-agent-driven commerce — protocols, errors, consent, payments.
Branded Commerce When the AI surface routes the user to a partner-branded checkout (e.g., for a guided purchase flow).

When you integrate (see Status today for current availability), these are the defaults to reach for:

Choice Default Why
Auth Browser session Per-conversation authentication; user-scoped session token
Protocol MCP for chat / agent-call surfaces; direct REST for backend agents MCP exposes Firmly tools the LLM can call iteratively; REST is the canonical fallback
Integration pattern Embedded checkout or deep link / headless Embedded for visual rendering; deep link / headless for chat-only
Payment Card via JWE; Agentic Pay for autonomous flows Standard for user-present; mandate-based for user-absent

​​ Status today

As a destination category, AI surfaces are a roadmap buildout. The underlying agentic-commerce platform — protocols, payment, error handling, consent — is production-ready and documented at Agentic Commerce. Surface-specific buildout (per-AI-surface integration patterns, MCP server templates, agent-stack guidance) is scoped per engagement.

​​ What to think about

  • Discovery scope. AI surfaces typically curate the merchant set rather than expose every merchant on Firmly. Discuss the scope during onboarding.
  • Error patterns. Conversational commerce has unique error states (stock changed mid-conversation, payment declined, address invalid). See Errors & Recovery for the patterns.
  • Going live readiness. Before flipping production traffic, work through the Going Live checklist.