AI agents get spending limits at a US grocer

On 21 October a US retailer whose stores and warehouse clubs sold about $350 billion of groceries in its last financial year, according to its annual report, set out how AI agents will be able to shop for its customers. An AI agent here is software that a person allows to carry out steps on their behalf, such as searching for products and placing an order. The retailer is building a connection made for agents, which starts as a beta for companies and developers, and says it will launch a separate profile for each agent within the next month. It has also published terms that agents must follow, and says agents that break them will be blocked from its site.

The shopper approves each purchase unless they set a spending limit

At present an agent that shops for a customer signs in with the customer's own account, so its purchases appear together with the customer's own. With the new profiles, each agent will have its own profile inside the customer's account and its purchases will be listed separately. The customer chooses how purchases are approved. Either every purchase needs approval, or the agent may buy within a spending limit the customer sets, such as $50, $100 or $200. The profile can be deleted at any time.

Under the terms, customers approve agent purchases by default, and the retailer may ask for further approval even when a purchase is within the limit. Agents receive no payment card details, cannot add or change a payment method and may use only the information the task needs. If an agent does not act as intended, the usual returns process applies. Reuters reported the same controls and added that the tools are open to anyone with an account, without a paid membership. A pilot for business payments launched on 20 October keeps the decision with a person in the same way, since agents pay only supplier invoices that a person has already approved.

Agents will connect through MCP instead of the web page

According to the retailer, agents now shop on its website through a web browser, following steps designed for people, which can be slow and lead to errors, and agents may get stuck along the way. The new gateway will use MCP, the Model Context Protocol, an open standard that lets an AI tool connect to other software and ask it for data or actions in a fixed format. In September and October, logistics companies used the same standard to open freight booking to agents.

The retailer says the gateway will help an agent find a customer's usual items, giving sourdough bread or a particular brand of milk as examples, without passing the customer's wider shopping history to the agent. The same tools cover its warehouse clubs, whose grocery sales came to about $65 billion in the same year.

Agents see the same prices as people according to the retailer

The retailer states that the prices an agent sees are the same as those a person sees on its website, with offers and fees shown before the purchase. This is the company's own statement and has not been checked independently. For buyers, it addresses one part of a wider question, since prices reach AI tools from many sources and the reader has to know which type of price an AI tool has returned.

Another large online retailer blocks shopping agents

Another large US online retailer has taken the opposite line. Its policy does not allow other companies to send automated tools to shop on its site, and on 20 September it began blocking a shopping agent that a social media company had launched earlier that month, according to Bloomberg. A spokesperson said that apps which buy from other businesses on behalf of customers "should operate openly".

The same retailer has also gone to court over an AI company's shopping browser. A district court barred the browser from the retailer's site in March 2026, but on 4 August the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit vacated that order, finding that the retailer was unlikely to win its claims under the US federal and California computer fraud laws on the evidence so far. The appeals court sent the case back to the district court, where it continues.

A French grocer lets shoppers fill a basket inside a chatbot

In Europe, a French grocery retailer took a third route in March. Users of a general AI chatbot in France can ask it for meal ideas, filter products by dietary needs, check what is available and build a basket, and the basket then moves to the retailer's own website for payment and delivery. In this case the chatbot prepares the order, while the payment and the final confirmation stay with the retailer.

Four points a food brand or buyer can watch

Approval: the profiles are due within a month. Until they arrive, an agent shops through the customer's own account and its purchases are mixed with the customer's.
Prices: the statement that agents see the same prices as people comes from the retailer. A brand or buyer can compare what an agent reports with the price on the website or the shelf.
Usual items: the gateway helps agents find the products a shopper usually buys. The announcement does not say how a product the shopper has never bought is found or shown to an agent.
Channels: an agent can only order through a channel that software can read, and two in three EU food makers took no electronic orders in 2024.