A headless commerce architecture is a decoupled approach where the frontend and backend of an ecommerce storefront are separated, using an API to connect them. This allows for a more modern tech stack, faster build times, improved performance, and enhanced user experiences. Monolithic commerce has limitations such as vendor lock-in, legacy applications, slow site performance, and high maintenance costs. In contrast, headless commerce offers benefits like improved developer velocity, cost savings, the ability to use cutting-edge technologies, empowering collaborators, increasing site performance, enabling omnichannel experiences, and creating content at scale. To adopt a headless commerce architecture, companies can take an incremental approach, leveraging tools like Next.js, Vercel, and headless CMS solutions, and prioritize the developer experience to create faster and more efficient development workflows.