Walmart opens its store to AI shopping agents, with spending limits.
Walmart is building its own entry point for AI shopping agents, with a gateway for agents to connect and profiles that let customers cap what each agent spends. The move comes just as Amazon has started blocking agents from buying on its site.
Walmart announced the plans on 21 October. Agent Profiles, due to launch within a month, give each AI agent its own profile inside a customer's account, so its purchases show up separately. Customers can approve every purchase or set a spending limit, with $50, $100 and $200 given as examples. The Walmart Agent Gateway is an MCP server that lets approved agents search Walmart's inventory and buy directly instead of clicking through a website built for people. It starts as a beta for companies and developers, and Walmart says it can help an agent find a customer's usual items without passing on their purchase history.
Walmart has also published terms for AI agents. Customers approve agent purchases by default, normal returns apply even if an agent gets something wrong, agents never see card details and can only use the information a task needs. Agents that break the rules will be blocked. Walmart says agents see the same prices as people on Walmart.com. Chief executive John Furner presented the plans at the Masters of Scale Summit in San Francisco, TechCrunch reported.
Walmart already sells through Meta's Muse, ChatGPT, Gemini and other assistants. The opposite approach is taking shape too: TechCrunch notes Amazon has begun blocking agents from making purchases, and some travel and booking sites have locked them out entirely. It is not yet clear how many agents will be approved for the gateway, or what it will mean for Walmart's retail media business.
For Gulf retailers and marketplaces, this is a working template for deciding how to treat agents: open the door, but on your own terms, with spending caps and clear rules. Brands selling through big regional platforms should start asking those platforms how agent traffic will be handled and measured.
Why it matters
Walmart offers a template for agentic commerce on the retailer's terms, a question Gulf marketplaces and their brand partners will soon have to answer.
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