Write a merchant requirement before the shortlist
A useful shortlist starts with the purchase you need to support. Cedar Research is our fictional store, selling a $29 digital report with a personal-use license. Sam permits an assistant to buy the current edition up to $35. Cedar needs a supported offer route, a current total, valid authority, a verified payment and usable report access.
Those details exclude some unsuitable comparisons. A product-description tool is not an equivalent alternative to a checkout provider. A payment gateway without order integration is a component rather than the complete route. A platform channel can be useful but is not necessarily a store-independent API service. Label each candidate's role accurately.
The matrix below compares three different kinds of route: Stripe's merchant agentic infrastructure, a Shopify platform/channel path and Agentify's digital-offer acceptance route. They are not interchangeable packages. The table identifies requirements and evidence to obtain, rather than claiming that every candidate is enabled for Cedar or awarding an overall score.
Compare routes with the same eleven criteria
Scroll the table to compare all columns.
| Criterion | Stripe merchant infrastructure | Shopify channel route | Agentify digital route |
|---|---|---|---|
| Role | Merchant catalog, checkout and payment infrastructure | Platform-specific catalog and channel integration | Digital offers, USDC/x402 payment and digital delivery |
| Merchant fit | Verify account and product onboarding | Verify store and channel eligibility | Check digital offer and merchant-wallet configuration |
| Discovery | Documented catalog publication scope | Catalog or Google feed path varies by channel | Digital offer catalog |
| Checkout location | Verify the supported surface and integration | ChatGPT referral; conditional direct checkout elsewhere | Agent-facing digital purchase route |
| Payment owner | Verify the chosen token/provider integration | Inspect actual store and channel payment route | Direct payment to the merchant wallet |
| Order linkage | Require retrievable payment-to-order evidence | Inspect platform order and attribution | Digital order linked to payment and delivery |
| Fulfilment | Identify the merchant integration owner | Merchant retains post-purchase responsibility | Digital delivery; do not infer physical shipping |
| Recovery | Verify timeout, refund and delivery behavior | Verify store/channel-specific recovery | Verify the applicable digital order recovery path |
| Costs | Use current account and route terms | Use actual platform/app/payment terms | Use current product and merchant route terms |
| Evidence | Product documentation plus merchant acceptance | Channel help plus actual store configuration | Product documentation plus actual merchant acceptance |
| Publisher relationship | No affiliation disclosed by this guide | No affiliation disclosed by this guide | Affiliated product of the portal owner |
Keep documented scope separate from observed fit
Stripe describes Agentic Commerce Suite capabilities spanning catalog publication, checkout and payments. It also describes Shared Payment Tokens in its agent-facing infrastructure. That establishes relevant product scope for investigation, while account, country and channel fit need current route-specific evidence. [1]
Shopify's documented agentic storefronts connect platform products to AI channels with channel-specific checkout behavior. Its ChatGPT path is a store-checkout referral; other eligible surfaces can use Shopify-powered direct checkout. That is a platform route whose suitability depends on the merchant's existing store and the specific channel. [2]
Agentify Commerce provides a digital offer catalog, direct-to-merchant USDC/x402 purchase route and linked digital delivery, with separate test and live routes. It is affiliated with this guide. The route serves digital merchant purchases; evaluate physical shipping, fiat payout, refunds and other protocol requirements separately rather than assuming x402 support supplies them. [3]
Compare payment and order ownership together
For each candidate, ask which participant receives the credential, processes the financial operation and supplies the authoritative result. Then ask which service creates the order and grants the entitlement. A route can look complete in a customer interface while leaving these responsibilities spread across several systems.
In Cedar's scenario, the buyer should not pay twice because the first completion response was lost. The merchant needs a durable attempt or order reference and a supported retrieval or retry path. Ask the provider to explain that exact case. A general statement that the product has an API does not answer it.
Paid-but-undelivered also needs an owner. Determine who retries delivery, who communicates with the customer and which records support a financial resolution if delivery cannot occur. Do not assume the checkout provider owns fulfilment just because its button appears at the final purchase step.
Check the precise channel and eligibility
Record seller location, buyer destination, product type, currency or asset and target shopping surface. Ask for current evidence of support for that combination. A provider's ordinary payment coverage can differ from its agentic commerce product coverage. A general protocol implementation can differ from channel onboarding.
Where availability is account-dependent, obtain an answer for the actual merchant rather than a generic country list. Where documentation is incomplete, mark the requirement unknown. Unknown is useful: it identifies a question that can change the shortlist. A fabricated positive answer only moves the uncertainty into a customer-facing failure later.
Keep a date with every material eligibility claim. Product distribution and platform rollout can change independently of protocol versions. Recheck the requirements when the intended route changes, and avoid copying a launch announcement into a permanent capability matrix without current verification.
Compare costs using the same order assumptions
Identify actual platform, processing, channel and service charges for the route. Do not compare a basic payment-processing rate from one provider with a full commerce-service fee from another and declare a universal winner. Use the same expected order volume, product amount and operational assumptions.
The illustrative $29 report is a scenario value, not a provider price. A customer's gross order amount, a processing fee and the merchant's received amount are different quantities. Preserve that distinction in any calculator or financial forecast. Do not invent savings percentages or conversion gains to make the comparison visually persuasive.
Include recovery work in the evaluation. A route with a low headline fee can still require extensive manual exception handling. Estimate that work from actual pilot cases when available; until then, document it as an uncertainty rather than assigning a made-up support cost.
Ask for a narrow proof of the required behavior
Send each provider the same merchant requirement and acceptance cases. Ask for the relevant documentation, supported account configuration or demonstration that resolves a particular requirement. “Show the existing purchase after a completion timeout” is more actionable than “show your AI features.”
Keep the evidence category visible. A public specification defines a contract. Product documentation describes supported behavior. Vendor marketing describes a claim. A reproducible merchant test shows a particular configuration's observed result. Do not treat these categories as identical, and do not claim a test occurred when you only read a product page.
For demonstrations, preserve the configuration and outcome without exposing sensitive data. A successful video can be informative but may omit the financial or delivery records needed to evaluate the join. Ask to see the relevant references through an appropriate authorized process, rather than accepting a success animation as proof.
Cedar’s provider requirement card
- Product
- Current personal-use research report; illustrative amount $29.
- Authority
- One-time purchase, maximum $35 total.
- Required outcome
- One verified payment and access to the correct report edition.
- Required recovery
- Resolve the original order after a timeout or failed delivery.
- Open eligibility
- Seller, buyer, currency/asset and channel must be verified for the chosen route.
- Decision evidence
- Current documentation and a configuration-specific acceptance record.
Evaluate authority and credential boundaries
The customer should understand what the agent may buy, from whom and for how much. A one-time report authorization does not cover a recurring service with a similar initial amount. Ask where the route checks material changes in item, seller, license and total before completing payment.
Inspect credential handling through the provider's actual mechanism. The model should not need raw secrets merely to request a permitted purchase. Determine which system protects the credential, which scopes it and which verifies the result. Do not infer these properties from a generic secure badge.
Also check order retrieval authorization. A route must let the right buyer resolve a timeout without exposing another customer's purchase. Product discovery can be public while payment and entitlement records remain controlled. The provider comparison should cover both completion and the customer's later ability to inspect the result.
Confirm the operational support boundary
Name the owner for each exception: invalid offer, unsupported customer input, unknown payment result, failed delivery and refund request. The merchant may own most of these responsibilities, even when a provider handles the technical integration. A written ownership map prevents a customer case from bouncing between teams.
Ask how the route can be paused. The merchant should be able to stop new purchases safely while retaining access to existing orders and financial references. Disabling distribution should not erase a paid customer's entitlement. Understand what data can be exported and what support remains possible after a provider relationship changes.
Review event verification and status synchronization. A provider-to-merchant payment event and a merchant-to-channel order notification have different meanings. The integration should preserve those distinctions and handle repeated or delayed events consistently. An assistant should not be the source of authoritative payment truth.
Run a bounded pilot before expanding the provider role
Choose one supported product, one channel and an acceptance owner. Test the normal Cedar report purchase, a changed total, an unsupported item, repeated completion, a lost response and delivery failure. Write expected outcomes before the test and record the actual result with the relevant configuration.
The result can be mixed. One route might provide a suitable catalog path but need custom entitlement integration. Another might fit digital payment and delivery while not serving a required shopping surface. Describe those findings precisely. A candidate is suitable for a task when the evidence supports the required boundaries, not because it won an unexplained overall ranking.
These are proposed evaluation scenarios, not tests performed by this guide. The matrix contains documented scope and questions to verify, rather than invented transaction results, fees or measured performance. Use your own acceptance evidence before making a public statement about the merchant's launch.
Use affiliation as information, not a hidden preference
Agentify is included because its digital offer, payment and delivery scope is relevant to the example. The portal owner is connected to the product, and the relationship is disclosed. That relationship should not change the comparison criteria or justify filling a missing answer with an optimistic assumption.
Apply the same requirement record to affiliated and independent routes. Keep product descriptions specific and external-product claims tied to official sources. A capability description is different from a measured deployment result: never invent customers, transactions or performance evidence for any candidate.
A useful provider decision ends with a specific supported purchase path and accountable operations. Keep unresolved requirements visible and assign the next action. Agentic checkout providers should help the merchant complete and explain the customer's order; the comparison should make that responsibility clearer before a contract or integration choice is made.