Walmart is moving to welcome AI shopping agents onto its platforms, announcing a new Agent Gateway and a set of customer protections designed for agentic commerce. The retailer disclosed the plans on Wednesday, October 21, 2026.
The announcement follows a move in the opposite direction by Walmart's chief rival. Amazon recently began blocking AI agents from completing purchases for online shoppers. Several travel and booking sites have also responded to rising consumer use of AI agents by shutting them out entirely.
Walmart has taken a different path. It had already announced a partnership with Meta's Muse, a leading agent in the field, and it offers integrations with popular AI apps including ChatGPT and Gemini. President and CEO John Furner said the new technology is meant to prepare for a world in which AI agents become mainstream. He spoke at the Masters of Scale Summit in San Francisco. The tools will cover shopping at both Walmart and its discount warehouse chain, Sam's Club.
At the center is the Agent Gateway, a new server built on the model context protocol (MCP), which Anthropic originally created. The protocol lets AI agents connect to outside data sources, tools and workflows. Through the gateway, approved agents can search Walmart's online inventory and make purchases for their users. Walmart says the system can also help shoppers find their usual brands and items without handing personal information or purchase history directly to the agent.
The company is also adding a way to tell an agent's purchases apart from those a customer makes directly. Agent Profiles, due to roll out next month, will let customers authorize each AI agent through a dedicated profile in their account, so the agent's purchases appear separately. Shoppers can choose to approve every transaction themselves or allow purchases up to a spending limit they set.
Walmart compares the setup to adding an authorized user to a credit card, where that person's transactions are identified and spending can be capped. A profile is created the first time a customer uses a given agent through the gateway. The customer then links it to a Walmart account and sets controls or limits, and can delete the profile at any time. Agent support is open to anyone with a Walmart account, with no Walmart+ membership required.
Walmart is also introducing terms specifically for AI agents, laying out how they must operate and what rights they have to transact on the site. Its returns process will apply even when an agent does not act as intended. That guarantee could reassure consumers wary of being early adopters, since they would not be stuck with unwanted products because an agent misbehaved.
Under the terms, agents cannot take actions beyond what the shopper intends, cannot access customers' payment information, and may only reach the information needed for a given task. Agents that fail to comply will be blocked from Walmart's site.
