Walmart announced on October 21 that customers will be able to give an AI shopping agent its own profile inside their Walmart account, and that agents which break its new terms will be blocked from the site.
Agent Profiles launch within a month, according to Walmart. A customer can require approval for every purchase or let the agent spend up to a limit the customer sets, with $50, $100 and $200 given as examples, and can delete the profile at any time. Today an agent signs in with the customer’s own account, so agent orders and customer orders appear together, Walmart says. A profile separates them.
Walmart is also building the Walmart Agent Gateway, which uses the Model Context Protocol and starts as a beta for companies and developers. The company says it is meant to help an agent find a customer’s usual items without receiving the customer’s wider shopping history. Walmart’s terms for AI agents say customers must approve agent purchases by default, agents receive no payment-card information and cannot add or change payment methods, and agents that break the terms “will be blocked from Walmart’s site.”
What it means for the marketing leader
Orders placed through a profile will appear to the shopper as a separate stream, so agent shopping gets its own record at Walmart. Walmart’s announcement does not say whether it will report that split to advertisers, and it does not mention sponsored products or other advertising inside the Gateway. For a brand buying retail media there, those are two questions to put to the Walmart Connect account team before holiday budgets are locked.
The shopper sets the limit, so a brand cannot assume an agent will reorder or upgrade a product without a person approving it. Earlier coverage on this site looked at Walmart Scintilla’s new marketplace data and AI agent and at why agentic shopping surveys disagree.
Source: Walmart corporate news
