Checkout as a Shopper Identity Network

The key bet is that checkout can become its own shopper identity network, not just a payment form. Amazon and Shop Pay already prove that recognized buyers spend more when checkout remembers them across purchases. Rally, Bolt, and Fast were chasing the same outcome for the rest of the internet, where a shopper enters shipping and payment details once and then moves through many non Shopify stores with far less friction.

• The hard part is distribution. Amazon gets repeat usage because everything happens inside Amazon. Shop Pay gets it because millions of merchants already run on Shopify, so one guest checkout can enroll a shopper into a broader network automatically.
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• Fast attacked the problem as another express button beside PayPal or Apple Pay. Rally positioned itself closer to Shop Pay by replacing more of the checkout flow, which lets it capture more shopper data and more transaction volume per merchant.
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• Bolt shows why investors cared so much. Its product tries to recognize shoppers across merchants from day one, and the broader category was framed as checkout and identity middleware, similar to how Okta and Auth0 became the identity layer for software apps.
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The next phase is fewer anonymous guest checkouts and more merchant controlled networks that recognize shoppers before the buy button. If independent checkout platforms can become the default layer for headless and enterprise commerce, the winner will own a powerful identity and payments rail across the open web.