You might have heard of “headless” content management systems, whereby you can run a CMS without being locked into a front-end platform. Well, a similar movement is coming to e-commerce.
The latest incarnation of this movement is the news that “headless checkout” startup Rally Commerce Inc. has secured $6 million in seed funding. The wider idea here is to “decentralize” e-commerce ecosystems by allowing merchants to decouple themselves from the likes of Shopify, et al. There’s also a twist. Rally combines headless commerce with a Web3 token approach, which — they claim — will allow a merchant to “own” a piece of the network.
The funding round was led by Rainfall Ventures, alongside Felix Capital, Long Journey Ventures, Afore Ventures and Commerce Ventures.
The team behind Rally previously built CartHook, a checkout solution.
Commercetools raises $140M at a $1.9B valuation as ‘headless’ commerce continues to boom
Rally says its checkout is platform-agnostic, allowing Merchants to replace their existing traditional checkouts with Rally’s, or build a headless experience, with Rally as the checkout and orchestration layer.
Jordan Gal, co-founder and CEO of Rally said: “Merchants are too often forced to accept the mediocre checkouts provided to them by underlying platforms, and app developers are subservient to the platforms they build for. We’re offering merchants a better conversion rate with higher average order value (AOV) and the freedom to build their businesses according to their needs.”
E-commerce is exploding post-pandemic after whole populations were forced onto online platforms, so anything e-commerce is obviously benefitting.
Joseph Pizzolato, investor, Felix Capital said: “The headless commerce space is booming as merchants and investors recognize the potential to create seamless and unique customer experiences across all touchpoints. Companies like CommerceTools, Nacelle, Fabric and Bolt are revolutionizing the old e-commerce stack, driving record funding inflows and sky-high valuations. We see Rally in the same category.”
For context, Commercetools — a provider of e-commerce APIs that larger retailers can use to build customized payment, check-out, social commerce, marketplace and other services — recently closed $140 million in funding.
But Commercetools and Rally are not alone. Others include Spryker, Swell, Fabric, Chord and Shogun.
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