Retail giant Walmart is taking a definitive leap into the future of automated shopping by embracing agentic commerce, announcing the launch of its proprietary Agent Gateway alongside a suite of new features designed specifically to manage transactions for customers utilizing artificial intelligence agents. The strategic move, revealed by the company on Wednesday, sharply contrasts with the approach taken by several other major players in the digital retail and service sectors who have chosen to lock their doors against autonomous software.
The announcement arrives just shortly after Walmart’s primary competitor, Amazon, began actively blocking AI agents from making purchases on behalf of online shoppers. While Amazon and various prominent travel and booking sites have responded to the growing consumer adoption of AI agents by locking them out of their websites completely, Walmart is charting a radically different course. The retailer had already broken ground by announcing a partnership with Meta’s leading AI agent, Muse, alongside existing integrations with popular AI applications such as ChatGPT and Gemini.
Now, the retail corporation is significantly expanding on those foundational efforts with advanced technology tailored to prepare for a world where AI-driven shopping assistants become mainstream. Speaking at the Masters of Scale Summit in San Francisco on Wednesday, Walmart President and CEO John Furner detailed the company’s forward-looking strategy. The newly introduced technology is engineered to seamlessly support agentic shopping across both core Walmart operations and the company’s popular discount warehouse division, Sam’s Club.
At the heart of this new initiative is Walmart’s Agent Gateway, which serves as the company’s brand-new Model Context Protocol (MCP) server. The gateway is specifically designed to help approved AI agents securely connect to Walmart’s systems over the Model Context Protocol. Originally created by Anthropic, this innovative protocol allows AI agents to connect smoothly to external data sources, specialized tools, and complex workflows. In the context of Walmart’s ecosystem, the protocol empowers an authorized AI agent to search comprehensively across the retailer’s vast online inventory and successfully execute purchases on behalf of the agent’s human user.
Furthermore, the retailer emphasizes that its Agent Gateway will provide a privacy-conscious shopping experience. The system will be capable of helping customers shop efficiently for their usual brands and favorite items without requiring them to share their sensitive personal information or detailed purchase history directly with the third-party AI agent.
To achieve this secure environment, the company has developed proprietary technology designed to clearly differentiate purchases initiated by an automated agent from those made directly by the customer themselves. This technological separation aims to give everyday shoppers significantly greater visibility and rigorous control over what their digital agents are permitted to do within the platform.
A cornerstone of this control mechanism is the introduction of Agent Profiles, which are scheduled to roll out to users next month. Through these dedicated profiles, customers will be able to formally authorize each distinct AI agent they utilize within their standard Walmart account. This feature ensures that shoppers can view all agent-driven purchases completely separately from their personal transaction histories.
Additionally, the system places shoppers firmly in the driver’s seat regarding transaction approvals. Customers will have the flexibility to choose how purchases are finalized, either by requiring manual approval for every individual transaction or by pre-authorizing transactions up to a specific, customized spending limit that they establish themselves within their account settings.
Walmart explains that these robust controls function similarly to adding an authorized user to a traditional credit card account, where secondary transactions are clearly identified and the primary cardholder retains the ability to cap spending and monitor activity.
These specialized Agent Profiles will be automatically established the very first time a user employs a specific AI agent to shop through the Walmart Agent Gateway. To get started, a customer simply authorizes and links the Agent Profile to their existing Walmart account, establishes their preferred security controls and spending limits, and retains the freedom to delete any Agent Profile at any time. Notably, full agent support will be available to anyone maintaining a standard Walmart account, meaning that a paid Walmart+ membership is not required to take advantage of the new capabilities.
Alongside these advanced technical frameworks, Walmart is introducing a specialized set of operating terms specifically for AI agents. These rules explicitly dictate how autonomous agents must behave while navigating the platform and clearly outline the exact rights they possess to execute transactions on the site.
Of particular note for early adopters, Walmart has confirmed that its standard returns process will apply equally to agent-driven purchases, including scenarios where an AI agent fails to act as intended or makes a mistake. This customer-friendly condition is expected to serve as a powerful incentive, potentially swaying hesitant consumers who might otherwise have been worried about participating as early testers of agentic commerce. By offering this safety net, Walmart ensures that shoppers will not fear ending up stuck with unwanted products due to a misbehaving or malfunctioning AI assistant.
Under these new governance terms, Walmart explicitly stipulates that autonomous agents are strictly prohibited from taking actions that go beyond the explicit intent of the human shopper. Furthermore, agents are barred from accessing the customer’s underlying payment information and are restricted to accessing only the specific data strictly required to complete the assigned task at hand. AI agents that fail to comply with these comprehensive operational terms will face immediate revocation of their privileges and will be permanently blocked from accessing Walmart’s digital ecosystem.
