Amazon Faces Backlash Over AI Listings 😡

Plus: DoorDash launches shopping app inside ChatGPT 🛒, while Visa forecasts AI checkout going mainstream 🤖.

January 07, 2026

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Amazon once shut the door on third-party AI tools. Now it’s facing backlash for doing something strikingly similar 🤔.

Happy New Year, Ecom Fam 🎉 Welcome to the very first issue of 2026 🥳.

The year is already moving at full speed. Amazon is under pressure from retailers, DoorDash is jumping into ChatGPT with in-chat grocery shopping, and Visa is openly betting that agent-led checkout is about to scale 🚀.

To kick things off, we’re also digging into what actually deserves a rethink this year with new strategies to stay sharp and competitive in 2026.

Alright, let’s get into it ⛷️!

In a rush? Here's the juice🤭:

😡 Amazon faces backlash over AI listings without consent.

🛒 DoorDash launches shopping app inside ChatGPT.

🤖 Visa forecasts AI checkout going mainstream.

🚀 Ecom strategies: 6 moves to start the year strong 💪

⚡️Worthy Mentions

Source: ChatGPT Image Generator

Months ago, Amazon announced ‘Shop Direct’ and its ‘Buy for Me’ button, two features meant to help shoppers find and purchase products that aren’t sold directly on Amazon. 

But a growing number of independent retailers say the rollout is pulling their product information into Amazon’s app without consent, leading to incorrect listings and fulfillment headaches.

Here’s the lowdown ⬇️:

🛒 How it works: Some search results now include a section for brand sites. Shoppers can click out to the retailer’s site, or use Buy for Me, where Amazon’s agent completes checkout on the brand site using the customer’s encrypted details. 

🧾 What sellers are reporting: Merchants say they’re seeing orders routed from Amazon for out-of-stock products, deleted items, and in some cases items they don’t sell, creating risk when customers blame the brand for errors it didn’t create.

📩 Opt-out exists, but trust is the issue: Amazon says brands can opt out by mail, and that its system pulls data from public webpages and checks stock and price accuracy. Sellers dispute how clean or fast the removal process feels in practice.

🧠 The bigger push: Reporting ties this effort to an internal plan to expand Amazon into a wider product catalog by pulling data from many external brand sites. 

Why it matters 🤔

If ecommerce marketplaces can intermediate your catalog without a clean opt-in, your team inherits the support, fulfillment mistakes, and brand trust) without getting the upside you actually want, including customer data, repeat purchase loops, and consistent merchandising. It changes who controls product info as AI agents are becoming a new front door to shopping. 

Source: DoorDash

DoorDash has launched its DoorDash app inside ChatGPT, allowing users to make in-conversation orders. The feature is rolling out to select users first, with broader availability planned in the coming weeks across mobile and desktop. 

Here’s the scoop 🍨:

🧩 What changed: Within a ChatGPT conversation, users can ask for recipe ideas, then prompt ChatGPT to shop ingredients via the DoorDash app. The cart creation happens in-chat, but the final review and payment happen in the DoorDash app. 

DoorDash describes this as removing steps like writing grocery lists and making store trips.

🔌 How users access it: Customers enable DoorDash via ChatGPT Account Settings → Apps, log in, then toggle DoorDash on inside the conversation to shop ingredients for a recipe. 

🛒 Store coverage: DoorDash is positioning this as broad grocery access across the U.S., spanning major chains like Kroger and Safeway, plus regional players such as Wegmans and Fairway Markets. 

📍 Why DoorDash wants it: DoorDash frames ChatGPT as a new discovery surface where merchants can reach shoppers at the exact moment they decide what to cook. Its aim is to convert intent quickly into an order without a separate search, list, and checkout journey. 

Why it matters 🤨

This definitely raises the bar for merchandising data. If a chat-generated cart is wrong, the shopper doesn’t blame the AI first but the store and the platform that delivered it. Also, any step that simplifies discovery, shortens decision-making, or eliminates friction is now fair game for AI. 

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Source: Scottish Financial News

Visa says agent-led checkout is moving into commercial reality after completing hundreds of secure, AI agent-initiated transactions with partners across its network. It expects this to accelerate quickly, forecasting millions of agent-completed purchases by the 2026 holiday season.

Here are the deets ⬇️: 

🧠 Betting on agents: Visa is betting the next phase of AI shopping is not AI that can recommend but agents that can execute checkout using a payment credential and defined permissions. 

🧩 The infrastructure play: Visa says 100+ partners are building on Visa Intelligent Commerce, with 30+ in a sandbox and 20+ integrating directly. The pitch is standardization plus security so agents can transact at Visa’s merchant scale. 

🛍️ What pilots look like: Early U.S. tests include a Consumer Reports agent buying Bose headphones (Skyfire) and one-tap flows from AI-styled looks to brand checkout (Nekuda, using integrations like Rye’s checkout API and Price.com). It also includes AI checkout infrastructure for BeyondStyle at Jomashop (PayOS) and automated B2B bill pay workflows (Ramp).

🌍 Where this expands next: Visa says pilots in Asia-Pacific and Europe are planned for early 2026, with additional readiness work across Latin America and the Caribbean, plus UAE projects for recurring payments. 

Why it matters 🤷‍♂️

Checkout is slowly turning into an API decision, and not necessarily a webpage experience. Now brands will compete on what the agent can verify fast (availability, delivery promises, returns terms, and fraud-safe approvals), rather than on the last-mile persuasion of a traditional cart. Again, this benefits whoever controls identity, authorization, and dispute handling when a purchase goes wrong.

🛎️ The Ecom Press Insider

Source: ChatGPT Image Generator

Ecom Fact: Online shopping is heavily concentrated later in the day. 40.8% of purchases happen in the afternoon, followed by 35.6% in the evening. Mornings account for 20% of activity, while overnight shopping remains minimal at 3.6%. (Source: Hostinger)

💡 Takeaway: Treat the afternoon and evening as your prime operating window, not just your ad window. Schedule launches, restocks, promos, and support coverage when shoppers are actively deciding.

🚀 Ecom strategies: 6 moves to start the year strong 💪

New year, new budgets, new goals. January is that quiet but powerful window where smart brands reset how they operate before the noise kicks in. Instead of defaulting to the same playbook, here are a few unconventional strategies worth testing early this year while competitors are still warming up.

🧾 Design your store for agents, not just humans: Clear product specs, use cases, and constraints help AI tools accurately interpret your catalog. It reduces misrepresentation and improves how your products are surfaced in automated shopping and comparison flows.

📦 Audit what breaks when demand is automated: Test inventory sync, substitutions, refunds, and order routing under rapid or repeated purchases. This helps to uncover operational gaps before AI-driven demand exposes them at scale.

🛒 Treat recipes, routines, and use cases as acquisition channels: Package products around outcomes like meals or workflows. This way, shoppers arriving with intent can convert faster without navigating your entire catalog.

🔁 Turn customer support logs into growth assets: Recurring support questions reveal friction points. Feed those insights directly into PDP copy, FAQs, onboarding, and post-purchase emails to improve clarity and reduce support volume.

📊 Rebuild reporting around decision moments: Track actions that signal commitment or hesitation like first reorders, subscription pauses, and returns to identify when intervention matters most.

🧩 Plan for partial automation, not full replacement: Use automation where it saves time without eroding trust, such as reorder suggestions or approvals, while keeping humans in the loop for exceptions.

⚡️Worthy Mentions

Wrapping up…

Who knew Amazon would be under fire for the same reason it blocked third party AI tools from its site. Quite some development, already.

The interesting part isn’t the announcements themselves. It’s how quickly expectations are shifting for shoppers, brands, and operators alike 🤔.

We’ll be here each week to break it down, filter the noise, and focus on what actually moves the needle 🪡. 

Catch you next week, and if you haven’t subscribed yet, now’s a great time to fix that 😉.