The first-mile control layer
The Intelligent Gateway Between Agentic Surfaces & Retail Commerce
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The Rise of Agentic Commerce
"Defining the first-mile control layer that powers compliant, measurable, and intelligent commerce in the era of ChatGPT and ACP."
- Patrick Harrington, Head of AI
The Rise of Agentic Commerce
A structural shift is underway in digital commerce. Consumers are no longer browsing traditional web or app storefronts—they’re conversing with AI agents like ChatGPT, which now surface products, compare options, and complete purchases without a click.
In 2025, OpenAI and Stripe introduced the Agentic Commerce Protocol (ACP), an open standard that allows agents to initiate and complete purchases directly with merchants.
Major retailers - Walmart , Etsy, and Shopify - have already integrated ACP endpoints, enabling transactions that never touch their websites.
No page views. No cookies. No pixels.
Commerce now flows through conversation.
Merchants Lose the First Mile
ACP secures the transaction but strips the context.The merchant receives a checkout payload but none of the pre-purchase behavioral signals associated with “consideration” stages that drive personalization and RMN measurement.
Add-to-Cart:
Endpoint: POST / checkout_sessions
Example Request Payload (from AI Agent to Walmart): This call creates the session and, most importantly, can include the user's information before payment is confirmed. This is the data that enables abandoned cart tactics.
Without visibility into consideration, merchants can’t attribute exposure → conversion, can’t retarget, and can’t prove RMN performance.
The result is a collapse of both control and monetization at the top of the funnel.
A Trusted Layer Between Agent and Merchant
The space between ChatGPT (the agentic layer) and the merchant’s commerce stack (the **controller layer**) is where MetaRouter operates.
It sits directly at the ACP ingress point - the first legal and technical moment user intent crosses into merchant control.
This is the trust and intelligence boundary: MetaRouter ensures every inbound event is lawful, enriched, and routed to maximize business value without violating compliance.
The First-Mile Fabric
MetaRouter is the controller-side data plane that ingests, verifies, embeds, and routes all first-mile events - ACP, web, app, or in-store - within the merchant’s VPC.
Core Responsibilities:
1. Ingest & Verify: Validate each payload’s legal basis and jurisdiction; attach a signed policy_token.
2. Summarize & Embed Intent: Convert signals into structured intent embeddings capturing product, price, surface, and stage.
3. Intelligent Routing: Direct embeddings to RMN, CRM, personalization, or fulfillment endpoints based on purpose and value.
4. Ledger & Attribute: Maintain a deterministic record: intent_id → token_hash → order_id → revenue.
This first-mile fabric replaces fragile pixels and SDKs with a unified, compliant observability and routing layer.
What ACP Provides - and What It Doesn't
ACP defines how agents and merchants communicate—not what data merchants can observe or how they monetize it.
OpenAI and Stripe describe ACP as an “open, minimal surface” built for security, not analytics.
That gap is where MetaRouter delivers value: making ACP commerce measurable, monetizable, and compliant.
The Pre-Checkout Stage
OpenAI’s GitHub roadmap references a pre_checkout_context extension - allowing agents to signal consideration events before checkout.
MetaRouter enables that future now.
When a user says “Add to my list” in ChatGPT, MetaRouter captures a non-PII intent session.
If that same user later checks out, MetaRouter links the intent_id to the order—reconstructing view → consideration → conversion.
This gives retailers lawful visibility into the entire journey while remaining privacy-first.
Lawful Data in Motion
ACP defines how agents and merchants communicate—not what data merchants can observe or how they monetize it.
OpenAI and Stripe describe ACP as an “open, minimal surface” built for security, not analytics.
That gap is where MetaRouter delivers value: making ACP commerce measurable, monetizable, and compliant.
Personalized Ads That Drive ROAS
By leveraging high-quality first-party data and advanced user data enrichment, retail media networks can offer more effective targeting and engagement, better attribution, and higher ad performance, strengthening their competitive edge and maximizing advertiser ROI.
Maintain Complete Control with Private Cloud
Operate MetaRouter entirely within your private cloud environment, giving you full control over data security and compliance enforcement, while also ensuring competitors can't steal your data.
Plug-and-Play Data Delivery
Integrate seamlessly with leading ad platforms, DSPs, analytics tools, data warehouses and more with our large library of platforms. Whether you’re using Google, The Trade Desk, Amazon, or custom-built solutions, MetaRouter fits into your existing ecosystem to minimize friction and maximize data utility.
Deliver End-to-End Measurement to Brands
Say goodbye to fragmented data silos. Whether processing events in real-time or batching for scheduled delivery, you get full control over data distribution. Capture and route ad-triggered events in real time, ensuring accurate delivery to advertisers’ preferred storage or analytics platforms.
Take the Next Step
The future of commerce and retail media networks depends on better data collection, stronger compliance, and real-time activation. MetaRouter gives you the tools to deliver better ad performance, maximize revenue, and future-proof your data strategy.
