In early April 2025, Amazon announced their new Buy for Me feature, which would allow customers to buy products from off-Amazon sites through the Amazon app.
This is the latest in a slew of recent AI updates from Amazon, but the implications of this specific change signal a move in Amazon’s overall strategy to continue to be “Earth’s most customer-centric company.”
Let’s dive into how Buy for Me works, why Amazon released it, and some questions we have.
What Is Amazon’s Buy for Me?
Amazon’s Buy for Me is an AI shopping assistant that allows Amazon to complete purchases on the customer’s behalf on off-Amazon sites, all within the Amazon app.
How Does Buy for Me Work?
The actual process of using Buy for Me is simple. While you’re looking for a product or looking at a brand that isn’t available on Amazon, you’d encounter the Buy for Me widget. From here, you can browse SKUs that aren’t available on Amazon.com, and go through the checkout process—all without leaving the Amazon app.
Amazon uses AI to share your encrypted information with the brand’s website, securely completing the transaction on your behalf. You can then track your order status within the Amazon app.
Why Did Amazon Develop Buy for Me?
Intense Customer Focus
The primary reason Amazon developed Buy for Me is seemingly altruistic—it continues their mission to be “the most customer-centric company.” Now, customers theoretically never have to leave the Amazon app, even to shop outside of Amazon. No more creating accounts for each new brand you buy from, no more searching Google for products. Now, you get to do all of that within the Amazon ecosystem.
Finance
On X, Amanda Orson noted that “If Amazon directs the transaction, even if it’s not their product, they control the funds flow. Like Shop Pay. Like Visa. Billions in payments, zero inventory risk.”
Amazon has made it clear that they aren’t receiving a cut of these transactions, nor are they marking up the price. However, they are still controlling how and where customers purchase products, which allows them to continue asserting their dominance in the market.
Own Customer Data
The less altruistic reason for Amazon implementing Buy for Me is that they get to own even more customer data. Now, they don’t just know how you shop on Amazon—they know your shopping habits off-Amazon as well. They can advertise to you with even more precision, and potentially also allow their advertising partners to more accurately target you.
Shop Products not Available on Amazon
As Kiri Masters noted in her Forbes article, she could now shop items that were not available on Amazon. This has historically been one way brands have encouraged shoppers to purchase off their owned site — they would offer items that were only available on their website, whether that be certain SKUs or a special edition of a product. But now, customers could theoretically buy these exclusive products in the Amazon app, while the brand still receives the direct sales.
Questions We Have
How secure are these transactions?
One of the first questions both customers and brands would have is about the security of these transactions, since Amazon is acting as the middleman and using AI to make the purchase on the customers’ behalf.
Here’s what Amazon had to say: “Using agentic AI capabilities, Amazon makes the purchase by securely providing the customer’s encrypted name, address, and payment details to complete the checkout process on the brand’s website. Amazon cannot see customers’ previous or separate orders from other brands’ sites.”
Returns and Order Inquiries
The next logical question from a customer perspective is how they should manage order inquiries or returns. Both of these types of interactions would need to take place with the brand, not with Amazon; you would simply follow the brand’s traditional flow for making a return or reaching out to customer service, using the order information you placed through Amazon.
It’s important to keep in mind that for returns, the brand’s policy might be different than Amazon’s. While Amazon is known for their generous return policies, brands might have shorter return windows, stricter guidelines, restock fees, or exchange-only policies. With this in mind, shoppers will need to be aware of the specific return policies, rather than just assuming the returns will be the same as on Amazon.
Sales and Promo Codes
Lastly, we wondered if the brand is offering a special sale or running a promotion on their site, if this discount would be applied through Buy for Me. We were unable to find any concrete information on this, but our assumption would be that you could apply those codes in the checkout like you would usually. However, there could be the possibility that Amazon or the brands wouldn’t be able to account for this type of discount, so you might need to purchase through the branded site in order to receive those discounts.
Subscribe to the Kapoq blog for more Amazon updates.
