The moves highlight two fronts in the companies’ competition to influence how customers buy. Walmart is making Sparky more useful for everyday shopping, while Amazon is making the case for businesses to give AI greater responsibility for purchasing. Both approaches bring agents closer to the decisions that generate transactions.
Walmart outlined new Sparky features designed to handle holiday tasks that require more than a product search, according to an Oct. 30 company announcement. Shoppers can upload a photograph of a handwritten list or export a digital list to build a cart. They can also share an image of a problem, such as a stained tablecloth, and receive product recommendations. For hosts planning meals, Sparky can generate recipes around budgets and dietary needs, then add ingredients to a cart when the shopper is ready.
The features also connect digital assistance to Walmart’s physical stores. Its Shop to Light capability lets shoppers locate an item on a store map and activate a flashing shelf label to find it, per the announcement. That gives Walmart a practical way to make its store network part of the AI shopping experience. An agent can help customers decide what they need, build a basket and find products in the aisle.
Walmart said in the announcement that voice capabilities are expected to launch chainwide by year-end, a distinction from features presented as available now.
Amazon Business’s Nashville conference in October addressed the purchasing challenge of how much authority companies should give agents. Executives emphasized human oversight, employee adoption and clear spending controls, according to Procurement Magazine’s Wednesday (Nov. 4) account of the closing session.
Céline Vuillequez, vice president of Amazon Business Europe, identified four essentials, including spending limits, company policies built into systems, human approval above the limits and a complete record of agents’ actions, the report said.
These requirements explain why business adoption involves more than making an agent easy to use. A purchasing decision must fit a company’s budget and policies, and someone must be able to reconstruct what happened afterward.
The Procurement Magazine report also offered a measure of commercial potential. Matt Yanchyshyn, vice president of AWS Marketplace and Partner Services, said AWS Marketplace’s agent mode doubled conversion from around 3% to 6%, per the report. The result concerns AWS Marketplace, rather than Amazon Business purchasing broadly.
Yanchyshyn also predicted agentic payments at scale in 2027, including routine renewals handled without human intervention, the report said. That remains a forecast, rather than evidence that such transactions are already widespread.
Together, the developments show how the competitive contest is moving deeper into purchasing. Walmart’s opportunity is to make shopping easier across lists, recipes, carts and stores. Amazon’s business opportunity depends on making delegated purchasing reliable enough for companies to authorize it.
For merchants and payments providers, the distinction is consequential. Helping a customer choose a product is one step. Earning permission to act on that choice brings requirements around approval, spending authority and accountability. Walmart and Amazon are approaching that transition from different directions, with customer confidence shaping how far each can go.
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