Definition

PRISM Commerce (Proxy Retail with Inventoryless Sourcing Model) is a retail model in which a platform offers an assortment to customers without pre-purchasing the displayed goods. After an order is paid, the platform selects an external source, purchases the relevant product, and manages the downstream fulfillment flow for the customer.

The model combines distributed inventory and human expertise through unified retail, payment, and fulfillment infrastructure. The customer interacts with one retailer. The Merchant of Record description applies where supported by the actual contractual and payment structure.

PRISM is an acronym for Proxy Retail with Inventoryless Sourcing Model. The name describes a retail architecture in which a platform organizes access to assortment from external sources and product procurement is linked to a paid customer order.

The prism metaphor expresses the same organizing idea: many distributed sources become one coherent customer experience. One interface provides access to a spectrum of products and human expertise.

PRISM Commerce uses three aligned terminology layers for different professional contexts:

• Consumer / conceptual: PRISM Commerce; expansion — Proxy Retail with Inventoryless Sourcing Model; description — Global Shopping Platform.
• Financial / banking / compliance: MoR Inventoryless Retail; full formulation — Merchant-of-Record Cross-Border Retail Platform with Virtual Inventory and On-Demand Sourcing.
• Technical / investment / operational: Asset-Light Global Retail Platform; full formulation — Asset-Light Global Retail Platform with Virtual Inventory, On-Demand Sourcing and Distributed Expert Curation.

All three layers describe the same model. Financial use of MoR reflects the actual contractual and payment structure. Asset-light characterizes dependence on pre-purchased inventory; operational infrastructure, working capital, and responsibility are considered separately.