Amazon expands Shop Direct to link U.S. shoppers to retailers

Amazon announced Wednesday it is expanding Shop Direct in the United States to let customers discover and buy products that are not sold on Amazon’s own store. The company added support for third-party product feeds from Feedonomics, Salsify and CedCommerce and enabled purchase flows through Amazon Search, the Rufus AI assistant and the Buy for Me feature.

The feeds provide merchants’ inventory, pricing and catalog information in real time, allowing Amazon to display product details within search results or Rufus when an item is not available in Amazon’s inventory. When a product is presented from an external merchant, Amazon provides a link that takes customers to the merchant’s website and notifies shoppers that they are leaving Amazon’s site to complete the purchase.

Buy for Me uses an AI agent to handle checkout on a merchant’s site after the customer confirms order details such as delivery address, taxes, shipping fees and payment method on the merchant’s checkout page. Orders placed through Buy for Me can be tracked in the same “Your Orders” tab as Amazon purchases or under a dedicated “Buy for Me Orders” tab.

Amazon began beta testing a related feature in February 2025 that linked search results to retailers’ websites when items were not sold on Amazon. The expanded Shop Direct program is available on Amazon.com, in the Amazon mobile app and through Rufus. The company said the program is not limited to merchants using Buy with Prime and that it will add more feed providers over time. Amazon also said it plans to introduce a merchant portal that will support a merchant-direct feed to give sellers a direct way to submit product data.