Walmart opens checkout to AI agents as Amazon slams the…

The retailer's Agent Gateway MCP server went live October 21 for approved shopping agents including ChatGPT, Gemini, and Meta's Muse — with Agent Profiles due next month and a strict rulebook that reshapes B2C distribution.

Walmart turned on its Agent Gateway on October 21, letting approved AI shopping agents search inventory and complete purchases across Walmart and Sam’s Club through a dedicated MCP server rather than by scraping the public site. OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini, and Meta’s Muse are the three agents cleared at launch, per Reuters. The companion Agent Profiles feature, which will add spending caps and per-agent authorization, is scheduled for next month.

The split with Amazon is now explicit. The Verge has catalogued Amazon blocking Perplexity’s shopping agent and Meta’s Muse over the past weeks, part of a broader pattern where major platforms are shutting buyer agents out. Walmart has gone the other direction and partnered. Target, per PYMNTS, is somewhere in the middle, permitting approved providers without the same embrace.

John Furner, president and CEO of Walmart, announced the tools at the Masters of Scale Summit in San Francisco. The framing was partnership; the actual document is a rulebook. Per Unite.AI and PYMNTS, agents can’t act beyond what the shopper intends, can’t access or change payment methods, and can only pull information needed for the task. Walmart.com’s Terms of Use, last updated September 21, 2026, require authorized agents to identify themselves and comply with technical limits. Walmart’s returns process applies even when an agent misbehaves.

The gateway itself is invitation-only beta. Walmart’s own page cites reduced latency, verified identities, controlled permissions, category restrictions, and rate limits as the built-in guardrails. Product and fulfillment data move directly over the Model Context Protocol, the open standard originally created by Anthropic, instead of through a browser.

For any brand selling to consumers, the structural read is simple. Agentic commerce is now a distribution channel with its own approved-vendor list, its own protocol, and its own compliance surface. The Amazon-versus-Walmart contrast resolves a question merchants had been treating as hypothetical: agent access isn’t a platform default. It’s a decision each retailer makes, and the decisions are already diverging before the holiday peak.

Walmart opens checkout to AI agents as Amazon slams the door

Sources