J.P. Morgan and Mastercard Back firmly’s $15M Round to Scale Agentic Commerce

Seattle-based firmly has secured $15 million in Series A funding to scale its "no-code" agentic commerce infrastructure. For fintech professionals, this highlights the rapid shift toward AI-driven shopping, where merchants must bridge fragmented payment and catalog protocols to reach consumers through AI agents, social channels, and conversational interfaces without heavy engineering overhead.

What was announced

firmly announced a $15 million Series A funding round led by Squarepoint Capital, with participation from strategic investors including J.P. Morgan Payments, Mastercard, and Samsung NEXT. Other participants in the round include Alumni Ventures, ARK Invest, Benhamou Global Ventures, Granada Funds, Hike Ventures, The Mercantile Companies, and Versus Ventures. This brings the company's total funding to approximately $20 million.

The capital is designated to accelerate the growth of firmly Connect, a no-code platform that provides a common infrastructure layer for merchants. This allows them to connect product catalogs, inventory, and payments to various AI platforms and commerce destinations while maintaining control as the merchant of record. Currently, firmly Connect provides access to over 11 million merchants representing more than $900 billion in Gross Merchandise Volume (GMV).

Alongside the funding, the company launched Ask Agent, an end-to-end conversational shopping tool for merchant websites. Ask Agent uses AI-powered natural language for product discovery, featuring a real-time catalog and in-chat checkout. It can be integrated via a single line of JavaScript and handles loyalty programs, cross-selling, and post-purchase support within the chat interface. Early deployments of the tool have reportedly driven conversion rate improvements of up to 18% and increased average order values (AOV) by up to 23%.

The companies involved

The funding round features a significant lineup of institutional and strategic investors. Squarepoint Capital, which led the round, is an investment management firm with a focus on technology-driven strategies. Strategic participation comes from J.P. Morgan Payments, the payments division of the global financial services firm JPMorganChase, and Mastercard, one of the world's largest payment technology networks. Samsung NEXT, the venture arm of Samsung Electronics, also joined the round, alongside ARK Invest, an investment firm known for its focus on disruptive innovation.

Seattle-based firmly operates in the emerging agentic commerce space. The company positions itself as a bridge between traditional merchant infrastructure and the growing ecosystem of AI assistants, publishers, and social media platforms. By offering a no-code connection, firmly aims to solve the technical complexity of integrating disparate payment and inventory protocols across different AI platforms. Other participants in the Series A include Alumni Ventures, Benhamou Global Ventures, Granada Funds, Hike Ventures, The Mercantile Companies, and Versus Ventures, reflecting broad interest in the infrastructure layer of AI-enabled retail.

What FF News has reported before

FF News has closely tracked the rise of agentic commerce and the involvement of major payment players in this sector. Recently, we covered how CrediMax and Mastercard Launch Agentic Commerce for Bahraini Merchants, signaling the geographical expansion of these technologies. Mastercard has been particularly active, with recent reports on how Tencent signs Mastercard MoU on agentic payments, days after a similar Visa deal. Additionally, the intersection of hardware and payments remains a key theme, as seen in our report on how Mastercard and Samsung Launch Samsung Pay in Morocco to Drive Digital Payment Adoption. We also noted Mastercard's infrastructure efforts in the B2B space, such as when Mastercard and INFINIOS Renew Partnership to Scale B2B Travel Payments Across MENA.

What this means

The investment from J.P. Morgan Payments and Mastercard suggests that the payments industry views agentic commerce not as a niche trend, but as a fundamental shift in how transactions are initiated. As AI assistants begin to act as intermediaries, the traditional storefront is being deconstructed. The challenge for the industry is no longer just processing a card; it is maintaining the integrity of the merchant-customer relationship when a third-party AI is navigating the catalog. This announcement puts pressure on traditional e-commerce platforms to simplify their integration layers. The key question for the sector is whether deterministic protocols will eventually consolidate or if no-code bridges will remain a permanent necessity in a fragmented AI landscape.