Walmart will soon let shoppers create separate Agent Profiles for each AI shopping agent in their account, with spending limits and purchase approvals. The feature, set to arrive next month, was detailed in a corporate blog post on October 21, 2026. By default, agents must receive sign-off on each order, but shoppers can allow purchases within a limit they set — Walmart’s examples are $50, $100 or $200. Each agent’s purchases appear on its own line, and profiles can be turned off at any time. A profile is automatically created when a customer first shops through the Walmart Agent Gateway, which is built on the model context protocol (MCP), an open standard created by Anthropic.
Walmart said payment-card data never reaches agents, agents cannot add or modify payment methods, and agents that break terms are banned. Even when an agent acts unexpectedly, Walmart’s returns process still applies. Amazon has taken the opposite approach: it blocked Meta’s Muse agent less than two weeks after its launch, citing customer security and user experience. Walmart has already signed on as a Muse shopping connector and also integrates with ChatGPT, Gemini and others. GlobalData Retail analyst Neil Saunders said Amazon may be protecting a closed ecosystem and could be worried about agents eating into its ad business. Walmart U.S. CEO David Guggina said at a Goldman Sachs conference in September that Walmart’s AI assistant Sparky saw 60% growth quarter over quarter. Walmart also rejected accusations from Groundwork Collaborative CEO Lindsay Owens that it uses AI to alter prices based on shopper behavior, saying 'We price products, not people.'
On the crypto side, digital asset infrastructure company AEREDIUM announced two products on October 22 that check what an AI agent may do before it does it. The Chair supervises coding agents by sitting between an AI coding agent and an organization’s development environment, checking each tool call before it runs. MCP Connector governs agents that make payments and trades through a digital asset wallet. Both run through AEREDIUM’s new AI platform and went live on October 13. A policy engine answers every proposed action with one of three outcomes: approved, denied or held for a person.
The Chair reads every command twice, with the second reading handled by a model that asks twelve questions, including whether a command reaches the network, installs software, deletes data or starts a machine. A Claude Code plugin handles integration, and pricing starts at $10 per person per month after a 30-day trial. MCP Connector gives each agent its own wallet, policy and owner. A Payer can send USDC, USDT, PYUSD and EURC to approved addresses, while a Trader can trade on designated exchanges — Curve, Uniswap and PancakeSwap — but cannot send funds out. AEREDIUM says the wallet signs with threshold signatures generated inside secure enclaves; no complete private key is ever created, and the company holds no key to owner funds. MCP Connector supports Ethereum, Arbitrum and Base, keeps transaction records for seven years, and starts at $49 per month for three agents, with a 0.05% service fee on trades.
The launch lands as AI agents move from drafting text to touching real systems. Coinbase opened payment rails for AI agents to corporate clients in July, and Binance’s Agent OS went live on August 20. XDC Network picked Concordium as the identity verification layer for its agent payments marketplace on October 14. AEREDIUM CEO Albert Dadon said the challenge 'isn’t just making these agents more capable, but making sure they operate within the rules we set.' Still, the release names no customers, and neither product page cites an outside audit of the signing design. TRM Labs’ September analysis put the share of screened commerce that appears to be agentic at between 0.6% and 7.5%.
