Amid post-pandemic e-commerce boom, Rally raises $6 million for headless checkout platform

You may have heard of “headless” content management systems, where you can run a CMS without having to rely on a front-end platform. Well, a similar movement is coming in e-commerce.

The latest incarnation of this movement is the news that startup Rally Commerce Inc. The headless money company has raised seed funding of $6 million. The broader concept here is to “decentralize” e-commerce ecosystems by allowing sellers to separate themselves from companies like Shopify et al. There is also a twist. Rally combines headless trading with an approach based on Web3 tokens, which they claim will enable a trader to “own” a piece of the network.

The financing round was led by Rainfall Ventures, Felix Capital, Long Journey Ventures, Afore Ventures and Commerce Ventures.

The team behind Rally previously created CartHook, a checkout solution.

Rally claims its checkout is platform agnostic, allowing merchants to replace existing traditional Rally checkouts or build a headless experience with Rally as its checkout and orchestration layer.

Jordan Gal, co-founder and CEO of Rally, said: “Vendors are too often forced to accept the mediocre payments provided to them by the underlying platforms, and app developers are beholden to the platforms they build for. We offer sellers better conversion rates with higher average order value (AOV) and the freedom to build their business according to their needs.”

E-commerce is exploding after the pandemic as entire populations have been forced to use online platforms, so there are obvious benefits to any e-commerce.

Joseph Pizzolato, investor at 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 disrupting the old e-commerce stack, generating record inflows and breathtaking valuations. We see Rally in the same category.”

For context: Commercetools — a provider of e-commerce APIs that larger retailers can use to create personalized payments, checkout, social commerce, marketplaces and other services — recently closed $140 million in financing.

But Commercetools and Rally are not alone. Others include Spryker, Swell, Fabric, Chord and Shogun.