BigCommerce Unveils Agentic Commerce Push, Payments Overhaul and New Pricing at Commerce Live

Key Points

• BigCommerce is shifting to an “agentic,” data-centric platform by integrating BigCommerce, Feedonomics and Makeswift to prioritize discoverability on AI surfaces and merchant-owned agents; several capabilities are already live with partners such as Dell and PacSun and the company rolled out “BigCommerce MCP” to all stores.
• The company is overhauling payments by reducing its long list of partner integrations in favor of a smaller set and launching BigCommerce Payments (powered by PayPal) embedded in the control panel, with U.K. and select European rollouts planned and a new fee to discourage poorly integrated external payment providers.
• BigCommerce processes about $32 billion in annual GMV and reports roughly $350 million ARR with nearly $30 million in non‑GAAP operating income, but management says it’s not monetizing GMV well; new pricing and packaging (renamed to core, growth, scale and performance) and support changes take effect June 1 to improve monetization.

Executives from Bigcommerce NASDAQ: BIGC used the company’s “Commerce Live” event in Chicago to outline product priorities, recent changes to operations, and steps aimed at improving monetization and growth, with a heavy emphasis on integrating its BigCommerce, Feedonomics, and Makeswift assets and positioning the business for what leaders described as a more “agentic” and data-centric future for commerce.

Leadership frames shift to execution and integrated platform strategy

CEO Travis Hess described Commerce Live as a product-focused gathering of partners and merchants designed to showcase the roadmap and gather feedback, particularly through advisory boards. Hess said the company has spent roughly the past 18 months undergoing transformation and is now “in execution mode,” after integrating three products “in a way that not only works better with the core base of customers… but also sets them up for the future.”

Hess argued that commerce is becoming “less storefront centric” and more “data centric, very distributed, and very orchestrated,” which he said requires strong product data hygiene and syndication so merchants can be surfaced in conversational AI interactions. He also pointed to cost cuts that have helped fund reinvestment in product development, saying the business is returning to being product-driven. He reiterated a goal that the company will “ship more in the next six months than this company has in its entire lifetime,” attributing that pace to product and engineering execution.

On distribution, Hess said enterprise motion is largely through global systems integrators (GSIs) such as Accenture and Deloitte, while mid-market growth depends on deeper, more verticalized partner solutions and accelerators. For small business, he described a shift toward product-led growth, supported by payments and technical partners, rather than service-heavy implementations.

Agentic commerce: discoverability, operational efficiency, and merchant-owned experiences

In response to questions about “agentic commerce,” Hess said interest is strongest upmarket today, with a near-term focus on discoverability and a longer-term push toward transactions on AI surfaces. He emphasized that an “open” and interoperable approach is important as value accrues across more surfaces than a traditional storefront.

Sharon Gee, SVP Product for AI and Feedonomics, broke agentic commerce into several buckets the company is investing in:

• Third-party discoverability: making catalogs discoverable and shoppable on AI surfaces, including via Google’s Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP).
• Merchant operational agents: tools like “BigCommerce companion” inside the control panel intended to help merchants run stores more efficiently.
• Merchant-owned agentic experiences: storefront shopping assistants and customer-facing agents that use merchant data such as order history, pricing, and loyalty.
• Building faster with agents: enabling tools so systems like Claude can help build commerce experiences, citing “BigCommerce MCP” and plans for CLI capabilities.

Gee said some offerings are already in market. She cited a public announcement involving Dell to support “agentic catalog exports to OpenAI” and Google, and said Commerce is live with an “Agentic Checkout Kit” with PacSun, which runs on Salesforce Commerce Cloud while using Feedonomics for catalog and BigCommerce’s headless checkout, integrated with PayPal Store Sync. Gee also said “BigCommerce MCP” became available to all BigCommerce stores “as of yesterday.”

Lance Owide, GM of B2B, said AI adoption in B2B may be more immediately measurable because B2B transactions prioritize efficiency over consumer-style experiences. He pointed to the company’s “purchase order agent,” framed as a way to automate workflows and reduce friction. Owide said the capability is live on customer sites today and gave examples including AS Colour (noting it is currently in a logged-in state) and Wolf Automation, which he said is in alpha and looking to reduce manual purchase order processing.

Payments strategy centers on BigCommerce Payments and fewer partner integrations

Michaela Weber, SVP and GM of Payments and Global Business Development, said the company’s long-standing openness to partners led to “over 70 payment partner integrations,” which she described as a mixed experience for smaller, self-serve merchants who want guidance and a simpler default. Weber said Commerce is reducing the number of payments partners it works with, removing partners with outdated integrations or poor acceptance rates, and investing more heavily in a smaller set of integrations.

Weber said BigCommerce Payments, powered by PayPal, was announced as generally available on March 30 and has merchants live today, including self-serve and enterprise customers. She said BigCommerce Payments is embedded in the control panel, and bundles common payment methods such as Venmo, PayPal wallets, Google Pay, and Apple Pay. She also said it is “the only payment provider” offering within-control-panel tools for managing payouts and viewing balances.

On international rollout, Weber said the next market is the U.K., with plans for select European markets in Q3, noting timing is dependent in part on PayPal and regulatory nuances.

CFO highlights scale, profitability, and focus on monetization gap

CFO Daniel Lentz said the company processes roughly $32 billion in annual gross merchandise value (GMV), which he said has grown 11% to 12% over the past couple of years. He cited roughly $350 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR), stating the company finished last year at “maybe $355” million. Lentz said the business is profitable, citing “nearly $30 million in non-GAAP operating income” last year and “almost as much” in operating cash flow.

However, Lentz repeatedly emphasized that Commerce is “not monetizing that GMV growth as well as we need to be,” attributing the gap to factors including payments revenue share dynamics and a growing mix of B2B transactions that are less credit-card-driven.

He also discussed pricing and packaging changes effective June 1 for the BigCommerce product, including renaming plans to core, growth, scale, and performance (with “performance” described as effectively a rename of enterprise plans). For self-serve plans, he said changes include adjusting support levels on the entry plan from unlimited free phone support to unlimited chat with an option to purchase phone support, and updating discount “slopes” so take rates decline more predictably as merchants scale.

Lentz also described introducing an “open payments provider fee” for self-serve plans when merchants choose payments providers outside a preferred list of roughly “15 or 20” providers. He said the goal is not to generate profit from the fee, but to encourage better-integrated providers and reduce the cost and complexity of maintaining a very large number of integrations. He added that negotiated performance plans are not subject to the fee.

Looking ahead, Lentz said he expects B2B to be a “disproportionate grower,” and argued that new product launches are increasingly tied to clearer monetization paths, including freemium approaches such as Feedonomics Surface. He said the company is trading at current levels because “we’re not growing fast enough,” pointing to net revenue retention as an area needing improvement, while maintaining that the underlying business is healthy, cash-flowing, and operating as “commerce pipes” that become more important as orders originate from more surfaces.

About Bigcommerce NASDAQ: BIGC

BigCommerce Holdings, Inc NASDAQ: BIGC is a software-as-a-service (SaaS) company that provides a cloud-based e-commerce platform designed to help merchants create, manage and scale online stores. Its platform offers a suite of tools including storefront design and customization, shopping cart functionality, payment gateway integrations, order management, shipping and tax solutions, and security features. The open architecture of its API-driven platform enables businesses to connect with a wide range of third-party applications, marketplaces and digital channels.

The company was founded in 2009 by Eddie Machaalani and Mitchell Harper and is headquartered in Austin, Texas, with additional offices in San Francisco and Sydney.

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