Two of the biggest retailers on earth reached opposite conclusions about the same question this week: what should a store do when an AI agent shows up to buy things for a customer? On October 21, Walmart said it will roll out the welcome mat, with profiles, spending limits and a dedicated technical gateway. Amazon, meanwhile, keeps telling third-party agents to stay out.
The difference matters for anyone who expects to hand a shopping list to an AI assistant this holiday season.
The short version
- Agent Profiles: each AI agent gets its own profile inside your Walmart account, due within about a month
- Spending control: approve every purchase, or let the agent spend up to a limit you set, such as $50, $100 or $200
- Agent Gateway: a faster route for agents built on MCP, currently an invitation-only beta
- Rules: agents that break Walmart’s terms get blocked, and agents never see your card number
- Amazon: keeps blocking third-party shopping agents and is fighting Perplexity in court
The problem Walmart says it is fixing
Today, an AI agent that shops for you usually signs in with your own login and clicks through the site the way a person would. Walmart points out two flaws in that setup. First, orders placed by the agent and orders placed by you look identical in your history. Second, the website was designed for humans, so agents can be slow, make mistakes and get stuck.
Walmart’s answer has three parts: Agent Profiles, the Walmart Agent Gateway and a set of terms agents must follow on Walmart.com and Sam’s Club.
How Agent Profiles work
Each authorized agent gets a dedicated profile inside your account, and its purchases show up separately from yours. Walmart compares it to adding someone as a cardholder on your credit card: you set the limit, you watch the usage, and you can cancel at any time.
- The agent connects first. The first time an agent shops through the gateway, Walmart creates a profile for it automatically.
- You link it. You sign in to your Walmart account to authorize the profile, and Walmart says only it sees that sign-in.
- You set the controls. Choose per-purchase approval or a spending limit, see what every agent bought, and delete the profile whenever you like.
Walmart has not said whether a limit applies per order, per day or per month. The $50, $100 and $200 figures are examples in the announcement, not fixed tiers. Profiles are expected “in the next month,” which points to late November, just ahead of the holiday rush.
The gateway and the rulebook
The Agent Gateway is a machine-to-machine door built on the Model Context Protocol, the open standard Anthropic released in November 2024 for connecting AI assistants to outside systems. Instead of pretending to be a shopper, an agent talks to Walmart directly. Walmart says it will help an agent find a customer’s usual items, like a preferred milk brand, without handing over the full purchase history.
Access is limited for now. The beta page describes an invitation-only program, aimed first at businesses and developers, with verified identities, controlled permissions, rate limits and category restrictions. Walmart has not named agent partners for it, though it already sells through its own assistant Sparky and integrations with Meta’s Muse, ChatGPT and Gemini.
| Walmart’s rule for agents | What it means for you |
|---|---|
| Purchase approval is the default | Nothing is bought freely unless you opt in to a limit |
| No access to card data, no editing payment methods | A rogue agent cannot swap in a different card |
| Agents may not act beyond what you intend | Violators are blocked from the site |
| Normal returns apply, even if an agent errs | A wrong order is returnable like any other |
| Same prices an agent sees as a human sees | Walmart says it prices products, not people |
That last promise lands in a live debate, since advocacy groups have warned that agent shopping could enable personalized price squeezing. Walmart’s wording covers the prices shown on Walmart.com, and it does not say how offers are chosen for an individual account.
Amazon chose the courtroom
Amazon says third-party apps that buy for customers must “operate openly” and respect a merchant’s decision to take part. It has asked Perplexity repeatedly to remove Amazon from its Comet agentic browser. Both retailers want agents to identify themselves. They just enforce it differently, one with infrastructure and one with litigation.
Dates from court docket reporting and Walmart’s newsroom post.
The appeal ruling is the key detail. The injunction that briefly kept Perplexity’s agent off Amazon accounts was overturned in August and sent back to the lower court, so the legal question is still open. A hearing on Perplexity’s motion to dismiss is set for November 20. Until a judge settles it, Amazon’s fence depends on its own technical blocks and its terms of service.
Why this matters beyond one retailer
When a store writes its own rules for agents, those rules become the de facto law for the category. Consent by default, spending caps, minimal data sharing and bans for misbehaving agents are all sensible, but each is a merchant’s decision. An agent maker who wants access to Walmart’s shelves will have to go through Walmart’s gateway and accept its terms.
The same questions are reaching the assistant side. Anthropic’s new proactive agent, Claude Duet, can already buy through Stripe’s Link or Shopify’s Shop Pay, and it also stops for approval before paying. Walmart’s own checkout push builds on an earlier change we covered when Walmart finally turned on Apple Pay. And the security worries around unattended software are the same ones behind Microsoft’s call to watch AI agents like insider threats.
Questions still open
- Does a spending limit reset per order, per day or per month?
- Which agent makers will actually get into the gateway beta?
- How will Walmart decide an agent “did not act as expected”?
- Will the same prices promise cover personalized offers?
The bottom line
Walmart is betting that shoppers who use agents will pick the store that gives them clear controls. Amazon is betting that it can keep the customer relationship by keeping outsiders away. Neither bet has been tested at holiday scale. If you plan to let an assistant do your gift shopping this year, start with approval on every purchase and move to a limit only after you have watched it behave.
Sources and further reading
- TechCrunch: While Amazon blocks AI agents, Walmart rolls out the welcome mat
- PPC Land: Walmart lets AI agents buy within customer-set limits
- ActuIA: Walmart sets rules for AI shopping agents
Featured photo: Christian Naccarato via Pexels.
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