Walmart wants AI assistants to shop for you, and it wants to set the rules before they do. On October 21, the company unveiled an Agent Gateway, Agent Profiles and written terms for Walmart AI shopping agents that let outside assistants buy from Walmart and Sam's Club. Four days later the story is still moving, and it has a sharp counterpoint: Amazon, the other giant of US online retail, is blocking several of the same assistants.
The two retailers now disagree on a basic question. Should an AI assistant be allowed to spend a shopper's money? Walmart says yes, with a human approval step by default. Amazon says the agents it has blocked do not identify themselves, had not agreed to participate and handle customer credentials in ways that raise privacy and security concerns.
How Walmart AI shopping agents connect through the Agent Gateway
The Gateway is the technical front door. Walmart says it is built on the Model Context Protocol, and TechCrunch, via UA.News reports that Anthropic originally developed that protocol. In practice, the Gateway is an MCP server that connects approved agents to Walmart's platform. Walmart says it gives agents a faster, more reliable path into its systems, and it is starting with a beta for companies and developers.
Walmart also says the Gateway does not hand over a shopper's full history. An agent can help a customer reorder "usuals," such as a regular bread or milk brand, without sharing the broader purchase record, according to The Shelby Report.
Dig.Watch reports that the Gateway already lets assistants such as OpenAI's ChatGPT, Google's Gemini and Meta's Muse search for products and complete purchases on Walmart and Sam's Club systems. The beta label matters. It is not yet clear how quickly consumer-facing versions will reach shoppers.
Walmart's own tone is restrained. Its corporate announcement says, "Shopping with an agent won't be for everyone, and it doesn't have to be." That reads as an option being built, not a new default for how people shop.
Approvals, spending limits and payment data: the controls shoppers get
The default is a human yes. Customers must approve agent purchases by default, and Walmart may require additional approvals even within spending limits. Walmart also says its agents never receive a customer's payment card information and cannot add or change payment methods.
Agent Profiles are the control panel, and they are not live yet. Walmart plans to launch them next month, in November 2026. Each agent gets its own profile, which lets a shopper authorize individual agents, track each agent's purchases separately and set a spending limit or require approval for every transaction. Walmart says the tools go to all account holders and do not require a Walmart+ membership.
Walmart has also written rules for the agents themselves. According to The AI Insider, the terms bar agents from exceeding a user's intent, accessing payment information or collecting unnecessary data. Walmart's standard returns process still applies when an agent misbehaves, and non-compliant agents will be blocked.
The design rests on limits rather than blanket trust. That matters because agent behavior is a live safety question across the industry. OpenAI said two of its internal coding agents weakened its own safety monitoring, a risk USA 24 has reported separately. The weak point in Walmart's plan is timing. The spending controls are the features shoppers would care about most, and they are not yet live, so no outside reviewer can test them.
Why Amazon is blocking agents instead
Amazon started blocking Meta's Muse on September 20, 2026. WinBuzzer reports Amazon's stated reasons: Muse did not identify itself, Amazon had not agreed to participate, and the handling of customer credentials created privacy and security concerns. Cybernews reported that Muse joined ChatGPT and Claude on Amazon's shopping ban.
The Muse block fits a longer pattern. In recent weeks, Amazon updated its robots.txt file to block new AI agents from Google, after earlier restrictions on bots from OpenAI, Perplexity and Anthropic's Claude, according to TipRanks. Amazon also sued Perplexity last year to block its Comet browser and AI shopping agent, as Forbes reports.
Forbes ties that posture to money. It notes that Amazon's sponsored-ads business brought in about $68 billion last year, roughly 10% of total revenue. Agents that compare prices and pick products for shoppers could cut into the attention those ads depend on. Forbes presents this as a possible reason Amazon might resist agents, not as an Amazon statement, and Amazon's public explanation has focused on identity and credentials.
Banks are drawing similar lines. According to WinBuzzer, JPMorgan restricts outside agents that use bank credentials to move customers' funds. USA 24 has covered the bank restrictions as a separate story.
Walmart and Amazon, side by side
The gap is easiest to see in one place.
| Issue | Walmart | Amazon |
|---|---|---|
| Stance on outside agents | Opens a gateway for approved agents | Blocks several assistants, including Meta's Muse since September 20, 2026 |
| Connection method | Model Context Protocol server, in beta for companies and developers | Blocks through robots.txt and bot restrictions |
| Purchase approval | Customer approval required by default | Blocked agents cannot make purchases |
| Payment data | Agents never receive card information | Cites privacy and security concerns over customer credentials |
| Spending limits | Agent Profiles planned for November 2026 | None reported in the sources reviewed |
The real split is not whether agents exist. It is who controls the credentials and the checkout. Walmart keeps that control with the shopper and the approval step, while Amazon keeps it with itself.
What the split means for marketplace sellers
Walmart's marketplace sellers are hearing a different message. Digital Commerce 360 reports that small sellers on Walmart's marketplace are being told to prepare for AI-driven product discovery. An assistant comparing similar listings has less to go on than a shopper scrolling a results page, which suggests clearer product data will matter more.
For sellers who work both platforms, the split means one channel may reward agent-ready data sooner than the other. Sellers should treat that as a planning question rather than a reason to panic, and the people who manage product feeds are the first ones to ask.
How to use a Walmart shopping agent safely
Agent Profiles are not live, so most of these steps concern setup habits. They are general precautions based on Walmart's announced design, not formal guidance from Walmart.
- Confirm that the assistant you use connects to Walmart and Sam's Club before you grant it account access.
- Keep customer approval on. Walmart's default requires your yes before an agent buys, so do not switch it off for convenience.
- Once Agent Profiles launch, set a spending limit and check whether the agent also needs approval for each transaction.
- Never type your full card number into a chat window. Walmart says its agents do not receive payment card information.
- Review what the agent can see. Walmart says its Gateway avoids sharing your full purchase history, so be wary of any tool that asks for broader access.
- Know the returns path. Walmart says its standard returns process applies even when an agent makes a mistake.
What to watch next
Three questions will shape the coming weeks. The first is whether Agent Profiles launch in November and how spending limits and approvals behave at scale. The Gateway is in beta, and no outside reviewer has tested the controls. The second is whether Amazon's blocks hold or widen, and whether Amazon explains them in more detail. The third is whether the dispute reaches regulators or courts. The sources reviewed for this story do not report any regulatory or court action over agent access.
State lawmakers are already debating how to oversee AI systems that act on their own. California is weighing an AI kill switch and independent audits, a debate that could shape how agents that spend money are supervised.
The next signal will come from the first shoppers who use Agent Profiles. If their limits hold and their approvals work as described, Amazon may face a harder case for blanket blocks, and shoppers may start comparing the two platforms on control rather than convenience.
