Meta’s Muse adds Shop Pay as Amazon blocks the AI agent

Checkout is a platform decision

Meta introduced Muse on September 8. The agent can keep working after the app is closed. To make a purchase, it needs the user’s approval and a payment method. At launch, that meant Link, Stripe’s wallet for AI agents, which creates a one-time card number. Shop Pay was listed as a future feature.

Shopify opened its stores to Muse. Meta said the agent had access to Shopify’s entire catalog at launch. On September 21, Shopify CEO Tobi Lütke wrote on X that the company was working closely with Muse to bring Shop Pay checkout to all stores on its platform. Two days later, Shopify announced Shop Pay was available in Muse as a wallet.

At Connect on September 23, Meta named Walmart, Best Buy, Gap, Sephora, Ulta and Wayfair among the retailers it was connecting to the agent.

Amazon took the opposite approach: it blocked Muse from browsing its site and making purchases there. A company spokesperson said third-party apps buying products for customers should act transparently and respect a service provider’s decision about participation. Amazon said it had asked Meta to remove the company from Muse’s capabilities.

Access has rules—and limits

Meta’s security documentation, published before the dispute, says users’ login details are kept in a secure place the agent cannot access, then entered into the browser when needed.

The same document says that when Muse browses the internet, it appears as though the user is taking the actions. Amazon’s terms, by contrast, require agents to identify themselves in every web request and reserve the right to limit their access at its discretion.

On August 4, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled that Amazon was unlikely to prove that Perplexity’s Comet agent had “accessed” its computers under federal and California computer-access laws. The court added that the ruling did not stop Amazon from regulating access through private terms of service. One legal route narrowed; contractual restrictions remained.

Meta also restricts third-party AI assistants on its platforms. WhatsApp’s terms for business services prohibit providers of general-purpose AI assistants from distributing them through the platform when AI is the service’s primary function. There are exceptions in some countries, and Meta decides what counts as a primary function.

The intermediary is the point

Publishers have spent two decades negotiating with technology platforms that control distribution and access to audiences. AI agents add another intermediary. An agent might read a publisher’s article without generating a page visit, compare products without showing a retailer’s ad, or book travel without sending a customer to a travel company’s site. Traffic, ad impressions, affiliate revenue and subscriptions can all depend on whether the agent has access.

The contrast is hard to miss: Meta’s agent was denied access to Amazon, while Meta itself decides which competing assistants can operate in its business-messaging network. I think that tension matters more than whether Muse can complete a checkout. The agent can find what a user wants and act on their behalf, but that does not give it access to customers. As Shopify and Amazon show, the businesses that own the storefront still decide whether the agent gets through.