Walmart is embracing agentic commerce with the launch of Agent Gateway, a new MCP server designed to let approved AI agents connect to the retailer’s systems, search inventory, and make purchases on behalf of users. President and CEO John Furner announced the technology on Wednesday at the Masters of Scale Summit in San Francisco, describing it as preparation for a world where AI agents become mainstream. The offering will support both Walmart and Sam’s Club.

The move sets Walmart apart from its top competitor Amazon, which recently began blocking AI agents from making purchases for online shoppers. Other travel and booking sites have also responded to agent adoption by locking agents out, while Walmart had already partnered with Meta’s Muse and offered integrations with ChatGPT, Gemini, and other AI apps. Agent Gateway is built on the Model Context Protocol (MCP), originally created by Anthropic, which allows AI agents to connect to external data sources, tools, and workflows. Walmart says the gateway lets customers shop for their usual brands or items without sharing personal information or purchase history directly with the agent.

To give shoppers control, Walmart is introducing Agent Profiles next month. Each AI agent a customer uses will receive a dedicated profile in the customer’s Walmart account, so agent-initiated purchases appear separately from the customer’s own transactions. Customers can require approval for every purchase or authorize transactions up to a spending limit they set. Walmart compares the mechanism to adding an authorized user to a credit card, with identified transactions and capped spending. Agent Profiles are created the first time a customer uses a given agent through Walmart Agent Gateway, and they can be deleted at any time. Agent support is available to anyone with a Walmart account; a Walmart+ membership is not needed.

The company is also publishing special terms for AI agents that specify how they must operate and what rights they have to transact on the site. Agents cannot take actions beyond what the shopper intends, cannot access customers’ payment information, and can only access the information needed for the given task. Agents that do not comply will be blocked from Walmart’s site. Notably, Walmart says its returns process applies even when an agent does not act as intended, a customer-friendly condition that could ease concerns from shoppers wary of trusting an AI agent with purchases.