Good morning,

Amazon is pushing back against a new generation of AI shopping agents that could reshape how consumers buy online.

The company has blocked Meta’s Muse from shopping on its platform and says it is also working to prevent third-party agents from companies such as Google and OpenAI from accessing Amazon without authorization.

Let’s dive into today’s edition.

Amazon is expanding Prime beyond its own marketplace, allowing U.S. merchants that use its Multichannel Fulfillment service to offer fast, free Prime delivery directly on their own websites.

Key Details: The new option comes at no additional cost beyond standard fulfillment fees and is available to new and existing MCF merchants. Amazon said more than 40% of eligible orders from early adopters have already shipped with Prime delivery, signaling early demand for the service.

The Process: Merchants can add a Prime badge to product pages, while Amazon verifies the shopper’s membership and fulfills orders from inventory stored in its logistics network.

Amazon said the option can be activated more than 70% faster on average than standalone Buy with Prime and does not require merchants to change their payment processing, order management, or store policies.

Big Picture: The move is part of Amazon Supply Chain Services, which brings the company’s freight, fulfillment, distribution, and parcel-delivery network to businesses outside Amazon.com.

Costco Wholesale beat quarterly estimates as inflation-weary consumers continued to gravitate toward its bulk goods and discounted gasoline.

Key Numbers: Fourth-quarter revenue rose about 11% from a year earlier to $95.72 billion, topping analysts’ $94.86 billion estimate, while adjusted earnings reached $6.60 a share, excluding a 15-cent benefit from tariff refunds. Same-store sales excluding gasoline and foreign-exchange effects rose 6.7%, ahead of the 6.11% expected by analysts.

Fueling Growth: Fuel was a major driver of the retailer’s performance, with Chief Executive Ron Vachris describing it as a “record year” for Costco’s gasoline business. Its stations typically sell fuel below market prices, helping draw price-sensitive shoppers as fuel costs rise.

Tariff Refund: Costco received $184 million in tariff refunds during the quarter under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act and, according to the company, used the refunds to reduce prices on some essentials, meat, beverages, and non-food products.

Seattle has become the first U.S. city to ban grocery retailers from using artificial intelligence and personal data to set different prices for the same products.

Key Details: The Seattle City Council approved the Fair Pricing and Transparency Ordinance on Sept. 22, targeting a practice known as “surveillance pricing,” in which algorithms use information collected through loyalty programs and other sources to tailor prices to individual shoppers.

The rules prohibit retailers from using information including employment status, race, gender, and browsing history to alter prices, while traditional coupons and discounts for veterans and seniors remain permitted.

Big Picture: The ordinance applies to retailers with 20 or more locations and requires them to disclose the criteria used for discounts and clearly display prices in stores. It could affect chains including Albertsons-owned Safeway and Kroger’s QFC stores, while smaller retailers such as PCC and Metropolitan Market would be exempt.

DoorDash will pay $131.5 million to resolve a New York City investigation that found the delivery company underpaid workers or paid them late, in one of the city’s largest labor enforcement actions.

Key Details: The settlement includes nearly $115 million in payments to about 264,000 delivery workers, known as Dashers, with a median payout of roughly $48, along with a $16.7 million civil penalty. DoorDash will also submit detailed worker-pay data to the city each month for three years.

The Cause: DoorDash said the problems stemmed from a combination of technical bugs and deliveries that crossed city boundaries, involved multiple pickup or drop-off locations, were partially fulfilled or canceled, or involved incomplete banking information. The company said it has since fixed the technical problems.

The U.S. Postal Service lost an estimated $163 million in revenue over 12 months as the volume of undeliverable e-commerce packages surged. Packages sent to USPS’s Mail Recovery Center rose 45% to about 19 million through February, according to an audit by the Postal Service’s inspector general.

Return Problems: Commercial shippers accounted for roughly 75% of the packages, while 62% were returns that could not be delivered because of invalid return addresses or because the sender refused to accept them.

Dead Mails: The audit also found that USPS had significantly underestimated the scale of the problem. The Mail Recovery Center received four times more dead mail than previously reported over a three-year period, while less than 1% of missing packages were successfully returned to customers, compared with the 39% recovery rate reported by USPS management.

U.S. holiday retail sales are expected to grow 5.5% year over year this season, marking the strongest holiday growth since 2022, according to the Mastercard Economics Institute

Key Details: Online sales are expected to rise 11%, while in-store spending is projected to increase 3.6%, the strongest showing for physical retail in four years.

Rise in Prices: Mastercard said a strong labor market, wage growth, and rising household wealth are supporting consumer spending, although roughly half of the spending increase is expected to come from higher prices, including elevated energy costs and demand linked to artificial intelligence.

What to Expect: For retailers, the final days before Christmas remain critical. Mastercard found that more than 35% of in-store spending on jewelry, handbags, department stores, and cosmetics during the 2025 holiday season occurred in the final week before Christmas.

Walmart is promising shoppers that artificial intelligence will not be used to charge different people different prices, as the rapid adoption of digital pricing technology fuels scrutiny over how retailers use customer data.

CEO’s Statements: Walmart CEO John Furner said in a letter to customers that Walmart would not use its AI shopping assistant or electronic shelf labels across its roughly 4,600 U.S. stores to set prices according to a shopper’s identity, income, purchasing history, or perceived willingness to pay.

Backstory: Walmart received two patents earlier this year for systems that would give machine-learning tools a greater role in pricing. The company has long built its retail strategy around “everyday low prices,” but personalized pricing has become a growing point of concern as AI makes individualized pricing easier to implement.

Big Picture: The issue is also attracting scrutiny from Washington. The Federal Trade Commission has warned that companies could run afoul of the law if they do not disclose how they use personal data to determine prices, while lawmakers from both parties have questioned retailers about their practices.

Lowe’s is launching a drone delivery service with DoorDash and Alphabet’s Wing, bringing the technology to the home-improvement retail sector for the first time.

What’s Happening? The pilot is already live at a Lowe’s store in Matthews, North Carolina, offering more than 100 products with delivery in as little as 20 minutes. Customers can order through DoorDash, where drone delivery will appear as an option for eligible shoppers.

The drones currently carry packages weighing about 2.5 pounds and operate within a 5-mile radius of the store.

Drone Delivery: According to Lowe’s, the service is designed to address a common problem for DIY and professional customers who realize during a project that they are missing a critical item. Instead of leaving home or a job site to visit a store, customers can have the product delivered and continue working.

Big Picture: The retailer joins Amazon, Walmart and Uber Eats in using drones for rapid delivery, as the technology continues to face concerns over noise, privacy and crowded airspace.