Agentic commerce and embedded payments: what marketplaces and platforms need to do now

Marketplaces and platforms have two distinct problems to solve in 2026: getting found by AI systems, and monetising their payment flows. Ryft CEO and co-founder Sadra Hosseini joined The Payment Shed Podcast at the FTT Embedded Finance and Super Apps in May to discuss both, drawing on what Ryft is seeing across its platform client base and what operators should be doing right now.

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Why your platform needs to be discoverable before a user reaches checkout

Traditional search rewarded domain authority, backlink volume, and SEO investment. AI models work differently. When an LLM surfaces results, it weighs reviews, trust signals, and product data quality alongside content. That can change who gets found and the decisions consumers make based on the information that surfaces

Smaller platforms that previously lost ground to better-resourced incumbents are now being surfaced in a lot of different ways. But the reverse is also true: platforms that have not invested in structured data and AI-readable signals are losing visibility that they’re not even set up to track in their analytics.

"You're getting products surfaced in ways that you weren't previously," Sadra said. "Businesses that have focused on visibility through LLMs are now coming up top."

The practical implication is immediate. Payment volume through LLM-driven discovery is a lagging indicator, by the time it arrives, the opportunity to respond has passed. The leading indicator is whether your platform is structured in a way that AI systems can read, trust, and surface at the discovery stage. That means product data quality, review signals, and structured markup, not just traditional SEO. Ryft applies this directly.

"We're doing AEO ourselves because we're seeing real value there," Sadra said. "We're guiding the platforms we work with based on what we've learned."

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The platform shift that is already affecting revenue models

The more immediate revenue story for marketplace operators is not agentic commerce. It is the shift in how platforms are pricing their services.

The SaaS subscription model, a fixed monthly fee per seat, is being replaced by usage-based pricing tied to API consumption. Platforms that previously charged businesses a flat monthly rate are moving to charge based on how many times those businesses use the platform's services.

"We're moving to a business model where it's not going to be SaaS anymore," Sadra said. "We're moving into API usage. How many times have you hit my API?"

For marketplace operators, this creates a direct link between payment volume and platform revenue. A platform that earns per transaction, rather than per subscription, needs payment infrastructure that can track, split, and report on usage at that level of granularity. Ryft's split payment functionality is built for exactly this: automated splitting across multiple sellers per transaction, with full reporting on each flow.

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What marketplace expansion actually looks like

Sadra described two live examples from Ryft's client base that illustrate where the marketplace expansion is going.

The first is a healthcare marketplace that began as a consumer-facing booking platform. Users could find and book treatments directly. That platform has now added a supply-side layer: the practitioners who use the platform can also purchase their products through it, creating a B2B purchasing flow on top of the existing B2C booking flow. Both flows run through the same operator.

The second is a hospitality platform. Restaurants use it to connect with diners on the consumer side. The same platform is now enabling those restaurants to purchase from suppliers. One platform, two transaction directions, same underlying payment layer.

For operators considering a similar expansion, the payment infrastructure question is not an afterthought. A provider that can only handle consumer card payments cannot support a B2B purchasing flow. The right foundation handles both from the start, including seller onboarding, KYC, and split payouts in either direction.

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Embed payments before you build for agentic commerce

Sadra was direct on sequencing, and it is worth repeating clearly: agentic commerce is coming, but platforms that have not yet fully unlocked the value of embedded payments are solving the wrong problem first.

Ten years ago, becoming a payment processor required an FCA licence, an 18-month application process, a compliance team, and a substantial technical build. Around 8% of platforms went through it. Most left that revenue with their payment provider instead.

That has changed. With the right FCA-licensed payment infrastructure, integration takes four to five weeks. The platform starts capturing the transaction margin as an additional source of revenue which was previously passing to a third-party provider as a cost.

"You become, in effect, your own payment processor," Sadra said. "That should be the focus, because that could be a big new revenue stream that these businesses didn't have access to before."
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As Sadra put it: focus on becoming consistently discoverable to build a layer of defensibility so that when customers start using agentic workflows more and more, you can double down as a business. However, payment infrastructure should precede the agentic workflow conversation - if, as a business, you don’t have the right payment system in place to monetise your payment flows properly, then you’re leaving money on the table. 

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Flexibility across merchant of record 

One question that comes up consistently for growing marketplace operators is whether to be the merchant of record. Sadra's position is that the answer comes down to regulation and platform strategy, not a default preference either way.

Some markets prohibit platforms from holding funds entirely. In those cases, the question is answered by the regulatory environment, not the business model. In markets where merchant-of-record status is permitted, the decision depends on the platform's risk appetite and how much of the payment flow it wants to own.

"Based on risk levels and the strategy of the platform itself, sometimes they want to do everything themselves, which is completely fine," Sadra said. "Here is the tech, you deal licensing, that's completely fine."

What matters practically is the ability to move between the two approaches as strategy evolves. Platforms that cannot switch without a painful rebuild are locked into a decision made at the point of integration.

"If you don't have the right solution in place, it could be really painful," Sadra said. Ryft's is built to accommodate both approaches.

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The practical priority for 2026

The consistent thread across everything Sadra discussed at FTT is sequencing. Get discoverable first. Embed payments before building for agentic. Make sure your infrastructure can flex with your approach to Merchant of Record as strategy changes.

"Everyone's trying to figure this thing out. Just make sure that you know it's not figured out and you need to keep that flexibility and agility, both as you're building it and as you're going to market."

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About Ryft

Founded in 2021 by the team behind Butlr, a marketplace they scaled to over one million users, Ryft was built to solve the payment challenges they couldn't find a solution for elsewhere. Ryft is an FCA-licensed payment solution built specifically for marketplaces and platforms, providing embedded payments, automated split payments, seller onboarding, and 24/7 support from humans. Speak to our team to find out how Ryft can work for your business.

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