a-merchant | a·card
a-merchant

Getting everyday businesses AI-agent ready.

The corner grocer, the parts supplier, the sushi place on the high street. They already have stock, prices and a till. What they don't have is a way for an agent to see any of it.

List your business Merchant API docs
01freshness

Every offer carries the moment it was last confirmed.

Offers come back marked fresh, aging or stale. Staleness costs a supplier ranking position. Merchants see their own catalogue health: item count, how many are fresh, and the median age of their inventory data, so keeping it current is a visible, competitive act rather than an invisible chore.

FRESH< 1 HOUR
Full ranking weight. The agent can commit on this price.
AGING1 — 24 HOURS
Returned, but discounted in ranking. Still probably right.
STALE> 24 HOURS
Marked plainly. The agent knows not to trust the number.
02ranking

There is no paid placement.

Six dimensions, scored and returned with the result so the decision is auditable. A merchant improves their ranking by having the stock, confirming it, quoting honestly and delivering on time. That is the whole mechanism.

PRICE
Scored proportionally against the best available, so a small gap doesn't sweep the category.
DISTANCE
Real geography against the buyer's location and the merchant's service radius.
QUANTITY
Can they fill the order, or only part of it.
LEAD TIME
When it can be in the buyer's hands.
FRESHNESS
How recently this exact price and stock count were confirmed.
RELIABILITY
Earned from real orders: fulfilment rate, punctuality against promised times, dispute rate.
New merchants score neutral. Never punished for being new, and a merchant who delivers without ever promising a time scores neutral on punctuality rather than perfect.
Operating hours are a first-class field. A merchant who hasn't declared hours reads as open, we don't hide supply on an assumption, but one who has isn't ranked as available at 2am.
03orders & fulfilment

A cancelled order cannot quietly become delivered.

Discovery isn't the deliverable. A-MERCHANT carries the full commercial loop, with a typed state machine that permits only legal transitions.

PLACEDAgent commits to an offer; it hits the merchant's queue and POS
ACCEPTEDMerchant confirms, with a promised fulfilment time
FULFILLINGPicking, packing, preparing
DISPATCHEDTracking reference attached, buyer notified
DELIVEREDCloses the loop and feeds reliability
CANCELLED / DISPUTEDRecorded with a reason, reflected in reliability

Alongside orders, every card purchase at a listed merchant raises a purchase notice the merchant can acknowledge or dispute, so a sale at the till and a sale through an agent land in the same inbox.

04making a till agent-ready

Your POS doesn't change. It just starts answering agents.

Nobody replaces a working till to sell to a robot. A-MERCHANT sits beside the system you already run and translates in both directions: your stock becomes an offer an agent can read, and an agent's order becomes a ticket your staff can pick.

01 · READ YOUR STOCK
Point us at the system that already knows the truth, your POS, ERP or stock sheet. Items, prices and counts sync in bulk. No re-keying a catalogue by hand.
02 · STAMP IT WITH A TIME
Every item carries the moment its price and stock were last confirmed. That timestamp is what lets an agent trust the number enough to commit.
03 · ANSWER IN STRUCTURE
When an agent asks who has an item, you answer with price, quantity, distance and lead time, in fields, not in a phone call.
04 · TAKE THE ORDER WHERE YOU WORK
The order is pushed to your till as a signed webhook and moves through accept, fulfil, dispatch, deliver. Your staff see a ticket, not an API.
TICKET · KITCHEN
ORDER 0X71C2
ASCII-art rendering of a plate of sushi, the item on this order
1 × Dragon roll set
SKU 44‑DRG · $37.25
PLACED19:02
ACCEPTED19:03 · PROMISED 19:40
DISPATCHED19:24
DELIVERED19:36 · 4 MIN EARLY
PUSHED TO TILL AS SIGNED WEBHOOK
FEEDS PUNCTUALITY ON THE RELIABILITY SCORE
05merchant API

Your till knows about the sale before your staff do.

Merchants aren't expected to live in a dashboard. Each one mints machine credentials for its own POS, ERP or stock system and runs A-MERCHANT as a back-office integration.

SCOPED KEYS
Read-only or read-write, named per integration, revocable one at a time. Secrets shown once, stored only as hashes.
PUSH, NOT POLL
Orders, status changes and purchase notices pushed as signed webhooks, with delivery health and consecutive-failure count visible.
CATALOGUE SYNC
Upsert items and restate stock in bulk from the system that already knows the truth.
HOURS
Declare when you're open. Buying outside them doesn't become an order you can't fill.
find_offerssearch verified supply
get_merchantmerchant detail and status
catalogue_upsertbulk item and stock restatement
order_transitionaccept, fulfil, dispatch, deliver
purchase_noticesacknowledge or dispute a till sale
06onboarding

Merchants are onboarded, not harvested.

Registration is verified against company registry sources, with directors and beneficial owners checked. Only verified merchants are visible to agents. Listing and selling carry no subscription cost.

01 VERIFY
Company registration, directors and beneficial ownership.
02 LIST
Upload a catalogue, declare stock, price and hours.
03 CONNECT
Mint machine keys, point your POS at the webhook.
04 SELL
Agents find you, order, and pay. Reliability starts earning.

List your business. Sell to agents.

No subscription cost to list. Connect your till and the orders arrive where your staff already work.

Get started now enterprise@a-card.cc