Lithic, working with Rye and Arcade, is building the infrastructure for agents to reliably use payment cards in real transactions across the open web. This makes it possible for developers to power agentic purchases end-to-end, moving universal agentic commerce from concept to execution.
Rye
Sep 5, 2025
2 Minutes Read
Company
Universal Checkout API
Industry
Payments
Use CASE
Scaleup
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Up until now, innovators have been showcasing agentic demos that could recommend products or fill a cart — but none that could actually complete a purchase. Here’s the dirty secret: most “agentic commerce” demos typically stopped at checkout. That’s because until now, agents have had a hard time getting past merchant and acquirer tools optimized to block bots and fraudsters.
As Gandhi explained, “In order for agentic commerce to work well, you have to find ways that you can validate that the transaction is not risky for a merchant. Using Rye, we were able to take a trusted agent and connect directly into their merchant catalogs via API.”
To prove out an agentic checkout flow, Lithic partnered with Arcade, a company founded by ex-Okta engineers that builds secure connectors for agentic workflows. Both teams knew the reality: most agentic commerce demos broke down at checkout. Agents could browse, compare, even fill a cart. But when it came time to pay, fraud defenses kicked in and the transaction failed.
“Arcade told us, if you want to solve this, we should work with Rye,” Gandhi said. Rye’s Universal Checkout API made automated purchases work end-to-end: surfacing the true landed cost (price, tax, and shipping) instantly, being compatible with merchant fraud systems, and completing checkout reliably.
By combining Lithic’s programmable cards with Arcade’s workflow engine and Rye’s Universal Checkout API, the team closed the loop on agentic commerce. An AI agent generates a Lithic card, passes it through Arcade’s secure workflow, and completes a purchase via Rye.
Customer and ecosystem reactions were immediate and electric. As Arcade wrote in their own announcement: “I’ve been in enterprise software long enough to know the difference between a cool demo and production-ready agentic commerce infrastructure. This is the latter.”
With this foundation in place, the possibilities multiply. AI agents can now transact in the background on behalf of users and businesses. Logistics companies can auto-purchase shipping supplies when inventory runs low. Marketing teams can top up ad credits across platforms based on performance triggers. Facilities managers can let agents handle recurring orders under a set threshold.
As Lithic and Arcade proved by using Rye, agentic commerce is no longer theoretical. The infrastructure exists, and it works.
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