Relay

Inspiration

Relay is inspired by the idea that shopping should feel like a helpful conversation, while Visa provides the trust layer that lets an agent safely act and pay on a customer’s behalf.

What it does

Relay is a AI-powered chatbot that allows users to browse merchant catalogues directly through the chatbot, suggests them items based on their needs and liking, compare items, place and track orders and get refunds without ever leaving the chatbot.

On the merchant side, Relay allows full catalogue CRUD without ever requiring any code. It provides a dashboard allowing merchants to get an overview of their revenue and orders, add multiple locations for their business, approve or decline refund requests, and also test their own chatbot through a demo sandbox mode.

How we built it

We built Relay as a Next.js/React web app with an Express/TypeScript backend. The customer-facing chat uses an OpenAI agent connected to merchant-specific catalogue, cart, session, and order services, so it can only recommend real catalogue items. We also built a no-code merchant dashboard for adding new merchants, catalogue upload/editing, sandbox testing, publishing, and order tracking. For checkout, we created a mock Visa-style payment stack that handles agent identity checks, tokenisation, risk scoring, optional OTP step-up verification, authorisation, and in-chat receipts, all without redirecting the customer away from the conversation.

Challenges we ran into

When we first implemented the LLM, the chatbot would respond to any prompt, no matter whether it was related to the project.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are proud of having a complete discover-compare-cart-preview-checkout-receipt loop all within the chatbot, as well as no-code merchant handling of orders, catalogue items and refund requests.

What we learned

We learnt that trust needs to be designed into agent workflows from the start: transparent previews, identity verification, and visible payment states all without ever leaving the chatbot make autonomous commerce trustworthy and understandable.

What's next for Relay

We want to connect Relay to real merchant inventory, order-management, and payment systems so catalogue availability, pricing, and fulfilment update live. We would also add delivery tracking and post-purchase support in the same chat, merchant analytics for agent-driven sales, personalised recommendations based on consented preferences, and production Visa integrations for tokenisation, risk checks, and authentication.