Walmart has announced the launch of its own Agent Gateway, a system designed to manage transactions and introduce new features for customers who shop using AI agents. The announcement came on Wednesday, shortly after Walmart's biggest rival, Amazon, started preventing AI agents from making purchases on behalf of online shoppers.

Walmart's decision to embrace AI technology sets it apart from other online businesses. Beyond Amazon, various travel and booking sites have responded to the growing consumer adoption of AI agents by blocking them from their websites entirely. Walmart, by contrast, had already revealed a partnership with a leading agent in the space, Meta's Muse, and provides integrations with popular AI apps such as ChatGPT, Gemini, and others.

Now the company is building on those efforts with additional technology to prepare for a future where AI agents become mainstream, according to Walmart President and CEO John Furner, who spoke Wednesday at the Masters of Scale Summit in San Francisco. The technology will support agentic shopping for both Walmart and its discount warehouse, Sam's Club.

The foundation is Walmart's Agent Gateway, the company's new MCP server, built to help approved agents connect to Walmart over the model context protocol (MCP). Originally created by Anthropic, the protocol enables AI agents to connect to external data sources, tools, and other workflows. In this case, it allows an AI agent to search Walmart's online inventory and make purchases on behalf of the agent's user.

Additionally, the retailer says its Agent Gateway will help customers shop for their usual brands or items without having to share their personal information or purchase history directly with the agent. Walmart has also developed new technology to distinguish an agent's purchases from those initiated directly by the customer, and to give shoppers more control over what their agents can and cannot do.

With Agent Profiles, rolling out next month, customers will be able to authorize each AI agent they use with a dedicated profile in their account, letting them see the agent's purchases separately from their own. Customers will also control how purchases get approved—either by requiring approval for each transaction or by authorizing transactions within a spending limit they set. The retailer compares these controls to adding someone as an authorized user on your credit card, where their transactions are identified and you can cap their spending.

Agent Profiles will be created the first time you use a given agent to shop through the Walmart Agent Gateway, the company notes. To get started, you authorize and link the Agent Profile to your Walmart account, then set your controls or spending limits. You can also delete an Agent Profile at any time. Agent support is available to anyone with a Walmart account; a Walmart+ membership is not required.

Alongside these technologies, Walmart is introducing special "terms" for AI agents that specify how they must operate and what rights they have to transact on its site. Notably, Walmart says its returns process applies, including when an agent doesn't act as intended. That's a customer-friendly condition that could sway consumers hesitant about being early testers of agentic commerce, since they won't fear ending up with products they don't want because of a misbehaving agent.

Walmart also says agents can't take actions beyond what the shopper intends, can't access customers' payment information, and can only access the information they need for the given task. Agents that don't comply with the terms will be blocked from accessing Walmart's site.