Several new ecommerce tools have been introduced this week, including drone delivery, AI shopping agents, and social commerce. Walmart has expanded its drone delivery network with Zipline, which will operate from 300 additional Walmart stores. Zipline has raised $1.5 billion to build nationwide capacity and expand U.S. manufacturing.
Shoppers then complete the purchase on the merchant’s site.
New Ecommerce Services
Users can explore tailored product suggestions, make purchases through live streams and brief video clips, access exclusive promotions, finalize transactions in-app, track orders, and receive assistance all within the same application.
Amazon has enabled text-based shopping functionality through Alexa, allowing a select group of users to send product requests via text message. The service identifies items, compiles shopping carts, processes transactions, and provides shipment updates. This feature will gradually become available to more customers in the weeks ahead.
Firmly, a service enabling direct purchases of products within AI tools, advertisements, and articles, has secured $15 million in Series A funding, led by Squarepoint Capital. The company also unveiled Ask Agent, an AI assistant for merchant websites that processes natural-language searches, facilitates in-chat purchases, and handles customer inquiries.
AI-Powered Ecommerce Solutions
Zoho has enhanced its marketing platform, Zoho Campaigns, by incorporating WhatsApp messaging, refining email editing tools, adding AI-generated content, and integrating AI workflow support. The update consolidates email, SMS, and WhatsApp campaigns into a single interface, enabling businesses to synchronize messaging, automate repetitive tasks, and evaluate campaign performance.
Amazon’s Seller Wallet now accommodates British pounds, letting vendors store earnings in GBP, pay UK-based suppliers directly, transfer funds to British bank accounts, or convert and send money across over 20 currencies internationally. Separately, MerchantFloor has developed Product Listing Agent, which converts a product image and brief notes into a fully optimized Shopify listing in under five minutes.
Veho has released Pulse AI, a system that evaluates delivery data after purchases to deliver insights on buyer behavior and shipping experiences. Merchants can observe post-checkout interactions and identify opportunities to enhance customer relationships. The core feature, Pulse Agent, responds to straightforward delivery-related questions using data-driven visuals and charts.
Cashfree, an Indian payment service provider, has updated its hosted checkout to support WebMCP, a proposed standard for AI interactions with websites. Instead of parsing web pages manually, AI agents now use structured tools to process orders, select payment options, and generate QR codes for payment via India’s Unified Payments Interface.
Meanwhile, Visa has launched its Agentic Commerce Benchmark, which tests leading AI models on realistic shopping tasks. Visa says the 22 models in the first round failed 42.8% of runs. Consumers can take the test, too.
Blue Yonder has introduced an AI-driven order management system as part of its Cognitive Solutions lineup. The tool covers each stage of an order, from the initial delivery promise through fulfillment, customer service, and returns. Teams can track, adjust, and optimize orders at scale. Listrak has integrated with Dataships for consent management, showing each shopper the appropriate consent request on forms, checkout, and confirmation pages based on location, consent history, and regulations.
SupportNinja has acquired Aventus, a customer experience agency for ecommerce brands, combining Aventus’s expertise with SupportNinja’s NinjaAI technology, human-supervised AI operations, and global staff. Avalara has launched Intelligent Tax Classification, which uses AI to assign tax and compliance codes to product catalogs, providing confidence-scored code recommendations, role-based approval workflows, and an audit trail. Avalara says the tool, trained on more than 3 billion items from 8,000 brands, helps businesses avoid tax calculation errors and launch new products faster.
