AI Agents Knock. Retailers Decide How Wide to Open the Door.

Retailers are drawing different lines on how far artificial intelligence (AI) shopping agents can go on their sites. Amazon blocks outside agents while it builds its own. QVC lets agents complete purchases. Walmart lets Google’s Gemini surface its products, then hands the basket to its own Sparky assistant.

Shoppers are forcing the issue. About 23% of U.S. consumers, or 61 million people, now start their shopping research with AI, according to an August survey of 2,191 consumers for the PYMNTS Intelligence report “The 50 Million Consumer Migration: The Data Behind Retail’s Shift Toward AI Discovery.”

A shopper planning a camping trip may never type “tent” into Walmart’s search bar. She could instead tell Gemini she needs gear for a weekend with two kids and a $500 budget, and Gemini can surface products from Walmart and Sam’s Club and move her toward a purchase.

For Walmart, that shopper is valuable. But Walmart may no longer control where she starts shopping.

That’s the tradeoff retailers face as AI agents become a new sales channel. Merchants that spent years tuning websites, apps, search results and ads now have to decide how much of the shopping journey to hand to AI platforms.

Walmart is leaning in. Gemini surfaces Walmart and Sam’s Club products when they’re relevant, PYMNTS reported. Shoppers who link their accounts get recommendations based on past purchases. They can also add items to existing carts and keep their Walmart+ benefits, Walmart said.

The goal isn’t traffic alone. When a shopper picks a Walmart item inside an AI platform, Walmart’s Sparky assistant takes over. It decides which products she sees and in what order, Daniel Danker, Walmart’s executive vice president of AI acceleration, product and design, said in March. Asked whether that cedes Walmart’s customers to AI platforms, Danker said, “I would argue it’s intermediation.”

QVC, Tapestry and Amazon Take Different Stands on Agent Checkout

Other retailers are making different calculations. QVC and HSN, the shopping networks owned by QVC Group, let agents complete purchases and send their catalogs to OpenAI and Google, The Wall Street Journal reported. Kohl’s doesn’t let agents buy, a spokeswoman told The Journal.

Tapestry sits in between. Shoppers can buy Coach and Kate Spade in Google’s AI Mode and Gemini, and every order needs their explicit approval, Tapestry said. Agents still can’t check out on the brands’ own websites. Tapestry tied that limit to fraud and inventory hoarding, according to The Journal.

Amazon sits at the far end. It has blocked dozens of outside agents, including Meta’s new Muse assistant, while it builds its own, PYMNTS reported.

Retailers want the traffic AI platforms send. They also want the purchase and its data on their own sites, where it feeds future sales and loyalty.

Merchants are following shoppers there. Shopify, the eCommerce platform, sends merchant catalogs to ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, Perplexity and other AI platforms through its Agentic Storefronts channel, the company said.

The channel rewards clean product data. AI-driven traffic and orders to Shopify stores each tripled year over year in the second quarter. AI search that draws on Shopify’s catalog converts at twice the rate of AI search built on scraped data, PYMNTS reported in August.

Amazon Still Gets the Sale

Being found doesn’t mean being chosen. Among consumers reporting their most recent AI-assisted purchase, 59.7% completed it on Amazon, “From Prompt to Purchase: Who Wins the AI Shopper?” an October PYMNTS Intelligence report, found. Big-box and department stores followed at 19.5%. Brands’ own websites or apps drew 6.3%.

The research points to a shifting discovery pool even as the sale stays put. Among consumers who used AI for product discovery or shopping, 59.4% said they now use AI to research products they used to search for on Amazon. Yet 57.9% said they usually buy on Amazon even when AI helps them find the product, the report found.

PYMNTS CEO Karen Webster laid out the gap in her recent column, “Agentic Commerce Needs Its Febreze Moment.” “A new intermediary gets the stores a new front door,” Webster wrote. “Only a better reward, delivered every time, gets them the habit.” For merchants, that means matching Amazon when an order goes wrong and beating it on the all-in price, she wrote.

Shoppers carry those habits into agents. The survey asked consumers where an autonomous AI assistant should buy an identical item at the same price, with the same shipping and returns. A large online marketplace led at 40.2%. A department store or large retailer drew 21.8%, and a brand’s own website drew 16.1%, the report found. Consumers who preferred one option cited reliable returns, selection and habit, even though the terms were equal.