Walmart Embraces Agentic Commerce With New Agent Gateway
Walmart is embracing agentic commerce with the launch of its own Agent Gateway to manage transactions and introduce new features aimed at customers using AI agents, the retailer announced on Wednesday. The move comes shortly after Walmart's top competitor, Amazon, began blocking AI agents from making purchases on behalf of online shoppers.
A Contrast With Amazon and Other Online Businesses
Walmart's embrace of AI technology differentiates it from other online businesses—including not only Amazon but also various travel and booking sites—that have responded to the growing consumer adoption of AI agents by locking them out of their websites entirely. Walmart, by contrast, had already announced a partnership with a leading agent in the space, Meta's Muse, and offers integrations with popular AI apps such as ChatGPT, Gemini, and others.
Expanding on Early Agent Efforts
Now Walmart is expanding on those efforts with more technology to prepare for a world where AI agents become mainstream, said Walmart President and CEO John Furner, speaking at the Masters of Scale Summit in San Francisco on Wednesday. The technology will support agentic shopping from both Walmart and the company's discount warehouse, Sam's Club.
How Walmart's Agent Gateway Works
At the center of the rollout is Walmart's Agent Gateway, the company's new MCP server, designed to help approved agents connect to Walmart over the Model Context Protocol (MCP). The protocol, originally created by Anthropic, allows AI agents to connect to external data sources, tools, and other workflows. In this case, it lets an AI agent search across Walmart's online inventory and make purchases on behalf of the agent's user.
What's more, the retailer says its Agent Gateway will help customers shop for their usual brands or items without having to share their personal information or purchase history directly with the agent.
New Controls for Agent-Driven Purchases
Walmart has also developed new technology to distinguish an agent's purchases from those initiated directly by the customer, and to give shoppers more control over what their agents can and cannot do.
With Agent Profiles, rolling out next month, customers will be able to authorize each AI agent they use with a dedicated profile in their account, allowing them to see the agent's purchases separately from their own. In addition, customers will control how purchases get approved—either by requiring approval for each transaction or by authorizing transactions within a spending limit they set.
The retailer says these controls are similar to adding someone as an authorized user on your credit card, where their transactions are identified and you can cap their spending.
Agent Profiles will be created the first time you use a given agent to shop through the Walmart Agent Gateway, the company notes. To get started, you authorize and link the Agent Profile to your Walmart account, then set your controls or spending limits. You can also delete an Agent Profile at any time. Agent support is available to anyone with a Walmart account; a Walmart+ membership is not necessary.
Terms for AI Agents and Returns Protection
Alongside these technologies, Walmart is introducing special "terms" for AI agents, which specify how they must operate and what rights they have to transact on its site. Notably, Walmart says its returns process applies, including when an agent doesn't act as intended. That's a customer-friendly condition that could sway consumers who were worried about being early testers of agentic commerce, as they won't fear ending up with products they don't want because of a misbehaving agent.
Walmart also says that agents can't take actions beyond what the shopper intends, can't access the customer's payment information, and can only access th...
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