Walmart announced on Wednesday that it is embracing agentic commerce, launching an Agent Gateway and related controls for customers who shop through AI agents. The move is the opposite of its biggest rival's: Amazon has recently begun blocking outside AI agents from making purchases on shoppers' behalf.

The Agent Gateway is Walmart's own MCP server — the Model Context Protocol was originally created by Anthropic — letting approved agents search Walmart and Sam's Club inventory and buy on a customer's behalf, without the customer having to hand the agent their personal information or purchase history. Walmart already offers integrations with Meta's Muse, ChatGPT, Gemini and other popular AI apps.

Agent Profiles, rolling out next month, give each agent a dedicated profile inside a customer's Walmart account, likened to adding an authorized user to a credit card. Customers can require approval for every purchase or set a spending limit, can delete a profile at any time, and do not need a Walmart+ membership. Walmart is also publishing terms for agents: they cannot exceed what the shopper intends, cannot access payment information, and non-compliant agents will be blocked — while Walmart's returns process still applies when an agent buys the wrong thing.