Network-as-infrastructure for AI agents: Visa uses AI to defend the network and sells AI fraud tools to banks, while opening its credentials, tokens and rails to agent builders through Visa Intelligent Commerce.
How is Visa using AI?
Visa's flagship AI product is Visa Intelligent Commerce, launched in April 2025 so AI agents can find and pay with Visa credentials; by June 2026 it included an OpenAI partnership, a verified-agent directory and a Large Transaction Model for fraud. Visa says its network blocked $40 billion in attempted fraud in 2024. In July 2026 it cut about 2,600 jobs, citing AI as one factor, and in August agreed to buy BioCatch for $2.4 billion.
Category
Card network
Founded
1958
Headquarters
San Francisco, United States
Licence and supervision
Not a bank: a card network. Visa Europe is designated a Recognized Payment System in the UK (Bank of England supervision; also regulated by the Payment Systems Regulator) and is subject to supervisory oversight by the European Central Bank and other European authorities.
Scale
329 billion payments and cash transactions with Visa's brand processed in fiscal 2025 (year to 30 September 2025)
Flagship platform
Visa Intelligent Commerce
AI leadership
Ryan McInerney · Jack Forestell · Rajat Taneja · Andrew Torre · Rubail Birwadker · James Mirfin
- Visa Intelligent Commerce launched on 30 April 2025 with partners including Anthropic, IBM, Microsoft, Mistral AI, OpenAI, Perplexity, Stripe and Samsung; by 18 December 2025 Visa reported hundreds of controlled, real-world agent-initiated transactions, with over 20 agents and agent enablers integrating directly.
- At Visa Payments Forum on 10 June 2026 Visa announced a strategic collaboration with OpenAI, an Agentic Directory of verified agents and merchants, and a Large Transaction Model trained on billions of transactions to improve fraud detection and reduce false declines.
- Fraud AI is the older and larger line: Visa said its Payment Ecosystem Risk and Control unit blocked $40 billion in attempted fraud on the network in 2024, and it bought Featurespace, a real-time AI payments-protection firm, for $946 million in December 2024.
- On 3 August 2026 Visa agreed to acquire BioCatch, a behavioral-biometrics fraud company protecting 760 million users at more than 350 banks, for $2.4 billion in cash; closing is expected by the end of Visa's fiscal Q2 2027.
- Visa is cutting about 2,600 jobs (roughly 7% of its workforce), mostly in technology and product; CEO Ryan McInerney wrote that 'AI is also helping to accelerate this evolution', and fiscal Q3 2026 results carried $563 million of severance costs.
- Visa pointed Anthropic's Claude Mythos at its own network under Project Glasswing and open-sourced the Visa Vulnerability Agentic Harness that governed the hunt, with human review of findings before fixes advance.
- Visa's FY2025 10-K names the EU AI Act, with high-risk provisions taking effect in August 2026, as a compliance risk, and discloses an internal employee AI assistant used by nearly 26,000 employees since March 2025.
What is Visa Intelligent Commerce?
Visa Intelligent Commerce, launched at the Visa Global Product Drop on 30 April 2025, opens Visa's network to developers building AI agents that search, choose and pay on a consumer's behalf, using tokenized Visa credentials with spending controls. It was extended with the Trusted Agent Protocol (October 2025), Intelligent Commerce Connect (April 2026) and, at Visa Payments Forum on 10 June 2026, an Agentic Directory of verified agents and merchants, a partnership with OpenAI and a Large Transaction Model trained on billions of transactions for fraud detection and authorization.[1][2][4][6][7]
What has Visa done on AI, and when?
- Sep 9, 2026
Visa Trust Index for agentic commerce[11]
A Harris Poll survey for Visa finds only 23% of US consumers trust generative AI to handle payments on their behalf, while 61% say they would trust Visa to handle agentic transactions.
- Sep 1, 2026
A2A Protect adds first Featurespace-based unified score[10]
Visa launches an enhanced A2A Protect with a unified fraud score, its first in-market integration of Featurespace technology; each alert carries a plain-language explanation of why a payment was flagged.
- Aug 27, 2026
Vulnerability harness extended to remediation[19]
Visa releases a new version of the Visa Vulnerability Agentic Harness that adds closed-loop remediation and validation and lets organizations deploy approved Anthropic and OpenAI models or other models by configuration; Visa says it has been downloaded by tens of thousands of developers since June 2026, and launches cybersecurity advisory services around it.
- Aug 3, 2026
Agreement to acquire BioCatch for $2.4 billion[9][18]
Visa signs a definitive agreement to buy BioCatch, whose AI and machine-learning models analyse behavioral, device and network signals to detect account takeover, scams and mule accounts, from funds advised by Permira; closing is expected by the end of Visa's fiscal Q2 2027, subject to regulatory approval.
- Jul 28, 2026
About 2,600 jobs cut; AI cited as one factor[16][17][15]
Visa plans to eliminate roughly 2,600 positions, about 7% of its workforce, mostly in technology and product. A person with direct knowledge told CNBC AI was a significant factor but not the sole driver. Fiscal Q3 results the same day include $563 million of severance costs.
- Jun 10, 2026
Visa Vulnerability Agentic Harness open-sourced[8]
After testing Anthropic's Claude Mythos against its own infrastructure under Project Glasswing, Visa releases the harness that directs AI models through vulnerability discovery, verification and remediation, with human review at key points.
- Jun 10, 2026
OpenAI partnership, Agentic Directory and Large Transaction Model[6][7]
At Visa Payments Forum Visa announces a strategic collaboration with OpenAI to enable Visa payments in agentic commerce, an Agentic Directory of verified agents and merchants, and a Large Transaction Model trained on billions of transactions.
- Apr 29, 2026
Agentic Ready programme expands globally[5]
The programme for issuers to test agent-initiated payments with live cards and real merchants, already live with more than 20 partners in the UK and Europe, extends to 85+ partners in Asia Pacific and Latin America.
- Apr 8, 2026
Intelligent Commerce Connect unveiled[4]
A single integration through the Visa Acceptance Platform that lets agent builders and merchants accept agent payments across Trusted Agent Protocol, Machine Payments Protocol, Agentic Commerce Protocol and Universal Commerce Protocol, including non-Visa cards; in pilot with partners including AWS and Highnote.
- Dec 18, 2025
Hundreds of agent-initiated transactions completed[3]
Visa reports hundreds of controlled, real-world agent-initiated transactions with partners; more than 100 partners, over 30 building in the sandbox and over 20 agents and enablers integrating directly, with US pilots from Skyfire, Nekuda, PayOS and Ramp in closed beta.
- Oct 14, 2025
Trusted Agent Protocol introduced[2]
Visa unveils an open framework for agents to pass cryptographically signed intent, consumer-recognition and payment data to merchants, so merchants can tell trusted shopping agents from malicious bots; early partners include Adyen, Checkout.com, Coinbase, Fiserv, Microsoft, Shopify, Stripe and Worldpay.
- Apr 30, 2025
Visa Intelligent Commerce launches[1]
At the Visa Global Product Drop, Visa opens its network to developers building AI agents that browse, select and buy for consumers, naming Anthropic, IBM, Microsoft, Mistral AI, OpenAI, Perplexity, Stripe and Samsung as collaborators.
- Mar 11, 2025
Scam Disruption practice unveiled[13]
Visa formalises a scam-disruption group inside Payment Ecosystem Risk and Control; investigators use generative AI tools for correlation and graph analysis. Visa says the group prevented more than $350 million in attempted fraud in 2024, on top of $40 billion blocked by PERC on the network.
- Dec 19, 2024
Where does Visa use AI today?
| System | What it does | Status | Use case |
|---|---|---|---|
| Visa Intelligent Commerce[1][3][4] | APIs, tokenized credentials and spend controls that let AI agents discover, initiate and complete purchases; hundreds of controlled real-world transactions and closed-beta pilots by December 2025, with Intelligent Commerce Connect in pilot from April 2026. | Pilot | Generative & agentic AI |
| Large Transaction Model[6] | An AI model trained on billions of transactions, announced June 2026, intended to improve fraud detection while raising authorization performance and cutting false declines. | Announced | Fraud detection |
| A2A Protect (with Featurespace)[10] | Real-time risk scoring for account-to-account payments using transfer learning and network-level signals; Visa says it increased fraud detection by 75% in the first six months of deployment, and the September 2026 version adds a unified Featurespace-based score with plain-language alert explanations. | In production | Fraud detection |
| BioCatch behavioral intelligence (pending)[9][18] | Behavioral-biometrics models covering account takeover, scams, money mules and application fraud; Visa agreed to buy BioCatch for $2.4 billion in August 2026, with closing expected by the end of fiscal Q2 2027. | Announced | AML / KYC |
| Scam Disruption with generative AI tools[13] | Investigators in Visa's Payment Ecosystem Risk and Control unit use generative AI tools for correlation and graph analysis to map scam networks; Visa says the group prevented more than $350 million in attempted fraud in 2024. | In production | Fraud detection |
| Visa Vulnerability Agentic Harness[8][19] | A governed multi-model pipeline that directs frontier models, including Anthropic's Claude Mythos, through threat modelling, verification, exploit-chain analysis and remediation of Visa's own code; open-sourced in June 2026 with human review of findings, and extended to remediation and validation in August 2026. | In production | Cybersecurity |
| Employee GenAI Hub and AI assistant[14] | An internal GenAI hub gives employees access to models and tools; Visa's agentic employee assistant, launched March 2025, was used by nearly 26,000 employees for over 261,000 chats through 30 September 2025. | In production | Generative & agentic AI |
| AI-accelerated product development[17] | Visa says it has cut product teams to two to four people from ten and that AI and the team changes enable a 65% boost in feature development, per American Banker's report of the Q3 2026 call. | In production | AI-generated code & coding agents |
Use-case links open the tracker's rules-by-use-case matrix: which documents govern each system type.
What has Visa disclosed in numbers?
| Metric | Value | As of |
|---|---|---|
| Attempted fraud blocked on the Visa network | $40 billion[13] | Dec 31, 2024 |
| Payments and cash transactions processed, fiscal 2025 | 329 billion[14] | Sep 30, 2025 |
| BioCatch purchase price | $2.4 billion in cash[9] | Aug 3, 2026 |
| Featurespace purchase consideration | $946 million[14] | Dec 19, 2024 |
| Jobs cut in the July 2026 restructuring | About 2,600 (roughly 7% of the workforce)[16] | Jul 28, 2026 |
| Severance costs in fiscal Q3 2026 | $563 million[15] | Jun 30, 2026 |
| Fiscal Q3 2026 net revenue | $11.6 billion (+14%)[15] | Jun 30, 2026 |
| Increase in fraud detection with A2A Protect, first six months | 75%[10] | Sep 1, 2026 |
| Employees using Visa's internal AI assistant | Nearly 26,000 (over 261,000 chats)[14] | Sep 30, 2025 |
“Historically, Visa has used AI to protect consumers, harnessing it to help combat fraud.”[1]
Ryan McInerney · CEO, Visa · Apr 30, 2025
“As AI agents become active participants in the economy, Visa’s focus is to ensure transactions are trusted, secure and seamless. That’s the infrastructure we’re building with partners like OpenAI.”[7]
Jack Forestell · Chief Product and Strategy Officer, Visa · Jun 10, 2026
“AI is also helping to accelerate this evolution and shape the way work gets done at Visa.”[16]
Ryan McInerney · CEO, Visa (staff memo) · Jul 28, 2026
“AI is compressing the time between vulnerability discovery and exploitation, which means defenders need a faster, more reliable path to action”[19]
Rajat Taneja · President, Technology, Visa · Aug 27, 2026
Who runs AI at Visa?
Which regulators govern Visa's AI?
| Authority | Why it matters here | Documents |
|---|---|---|
| UK (BoE / PRA / FCA) | Visa Europe is designated a Recognized Payment System, bringing it within the Bank of England's supervisory powers on governance and risk management, and is regulated by the Payment Systems Regulator; the 2026 UK warning on frontier-AI cyber capabilities covers financial market infrastructures like it. | BoE/FCA/HMT joint statement on frontier AI and cyber resilience (May 2026) FPC Financial Stability in Focus: AI (Apr 2025) |
| ECB | Visa's FY2025 10-K states that Visa Europe is subject to supervisory oversight by the European Central Bank and certain competent authorities in Europe, which reaches the AI fraud and authorization services run on its European network. | |
| EU AI Act | Visa's FY2025 10-K cites the EU AI Act, with high-risk provisions taking effect in August 2026, as a compliance risk for the AI models behind its fraud, authorization and agentic-commerce services used in Europe. | Regulation (EU) 2024/1689 EBA factsheet on the AI Act |
| SEC | Visa is an SEC registrant (NYSE: V) whose 10-K and 10-Q describe its AI products, AI-related risks and the AI-linked July 2026 restructuring, so the SEC's scrutiny of AI disclosures applies. | Investor Advisory Committee AI disclosure recommendation Atkins remarks at Investor Advisory Committee (Sep 2026) |
Linked authorities have a page in the AI Regulation Tracker; the others are named for completeness and not yet tracked.
What does the public record suggest about Visa's AI strategy?
Analysis by BankingNewsAI from the sources cited on this page. Observations, not advice.
01
Visa is selling the trust layer, not the agent
Every agentic release (Intelligent Commerce, Trusted Agent Protocol, Agentic Directory, Intelligent Commerce Connect) positions Visa as the verifier of agents, tokens and merchants rather than as a consumer-facing assistant. Its own September 2026 survey shows why: 23% of US consumers trust generative AI with payments, 61% say they would trust Visa.
02
Agentic commerce is still in pilot on the record
The public record shows hundreds of controlled transactions in December 2025, pilots of Intelligent Commerce Connect from April 2026 and a testing programme for issuers; Visa has not published agentic payment volumes. The fraud and authorization AI, by contrast, is in production at network scale.
03
Fraud AI is being bought as much as built
Featurespace ($946 million, 2024) reached its first combined in-market product only in September 2026, and BioCatch ($2.4 billion) is not expected to close until fiscal Q2 2027 — a long integration runway for the upstream fraud and account-takeover coverage Visa is assembling.
04
AI is now named in workforce decisions
The July 2026 cuts of about 2,600 roles came with the CEO saying AI is helping shape how work gets done, and management describing two-to-four-person product teams. Visa framed AI as one factor alongside reinvestment in growth areas, not the sole cause.
05
Frontier models are pointed at the network itself
Visa's use of Anthropic's Claude Mythos to hunt vulnerabilities, and open-sourcing the harness, puts a payment system designated by the Bank of England among the early adopters of frontier-model security testing — the same capability UK authorities warned about in 2026.
How does Visa use AI?
Visa uses AI in two main ways. Defensively, AI models score transactions for fraud; Visa said its network blocked $40 billion in attempted fraud in 2024, and it has bought Featurespace and agreed to buy BioCatch for $2.4 billion. Commercially, Visa Intelligent Commerce, launched in April 2025, lets AI agents pay with tokenized Visa credentials under consumer-set controls, with pilots running through 2026.
What is Visa Intelligent Commerce?
Visa Intelligent Commerce is Visa's platform for agentic commerce, launched on 30 April 2025. It gives AI agent developers access to tokenized Visa credentials, authentication and spending controls so an agent can buy on a consumer's behalf. It has since added the Trusted Agent Protocol, Intelligent Commerce Connect and an Agentic Directory; by December 2025 Visa reported hundreds of controlled real-world agent transactions.
Does Visa work with OpenAI?
Yes. On 10 June 2026 Visa announced a strategic collaboration with OpenAI to enable secure Visa payments in agentic commerce across OpenAI experiences, with Visa supplying its network, tokenization and risk capabilities. OpenAI, along with Anthropic, Microsoft, Mistral AI and Perplexity, was also named as a collaborator when Visa Intelligent Commerce launched in April 2025.
Did Visa lay off staff because of AI?
Partly, by its own account. In July 2026 Visa said it would cut about 2,600 jobs, roughly 7% of its workforce, mostly in technology and product. CEO Ryan McInerney wrote that AI is helping to shape the way work gets done at Visa, and a person with direct knowledge told CNBC AI was a significant factor but not the sole driver. The quarter carried $563 million of severance costs.
Why is Visa buying BioCatch?
Visa agreed on 3 August 2026 to pay $2.4 billion in cash for BioCatch, whose AI and machine-learning models read behavioral and device signals such as keystrokes and touch gestures to spot account takeovers, scams and money mules. BioCatch protects 760 million users at more than 350 banks. The deal is expected to close by the end of Visa's fiscal Q2 2027, subject to regulatory approval.
Who regulates Visa?
Visa is not a bank. In the UK, Visa Europe is designated a Recognized Payment System supervised by the Bank of England and is regulated by the Payment Systems Regulator; in the EU it is subject to oversight by the European Central Bank and other authorities. Visa's FY2025 10-K also flags the EU AI Act, with high-risk rules from August 2026, as a compliance risk. As a listed company it reports to the SEC.
How much fraud does Visa's AI stop?
Visa said its Payment Ecosystem Risk and Control unit blocked $40 billion in attempted fraud on the Visa network in 2024, and that its scam-disruption team prevented more than $350 million more. For account-to-account payments, Visa says A2A Protect increased fraud detection by 75% in its first six months of deployment.
- The Future is Here: Visa Announces New Era of Commerce Featuring AI
- Visa Introduces Trusted Agent Protocol: An Ecosystem-Led Framework for AI Commerce
- Visa and Partners Complete Secure AI Transactions, Setting the Stage for Mainstream Adoption in 2026
- Visa Opens the Door to AI-Driven Shopping for Businesses Worldwide
- Visa Announces Global Expansion of Agentic Ready Program
- Visa Announces New AI, Stablecoin and Token Innovations to Power Intelligent, Programmable Commerce at Visa Payments Forum
- Visa Partners with OpenAI to Power the Next Generation of AI Commerce
- Visa Releases Its AI-Powered Cyber Defense System to Open Source
- Visa to Acquire BioCatch
- Visa Launches Enhanced A2A Protect Innovations to Help Financial Institutions Stop Fraud Before Money Leaves Accounts
- New Visa Research Finds Consumer Trust is Accelerating the Path to Agentic Commerce
- Visa Completes Acquisition of Featurespace
- Visa Unveils its Scam Disruption Practice, Helping Protect Consumers and the Financial Ecosystem Globally
- Visa Inc. Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended September 30, 2025
- Visa Reports Fiscal Third Quarter 2026 Results (Form 8-K, Exhibit 99.1)
- Visa is cutting 7% of employees in efficiency push as AI reshapes work
- Visa says AI is helping to enable workforce cuts
- Visa to buy cybersecurity firm BioCatch for $2.4 billion amid surge in AI-powered scams
- Visa Expands Support for its Clients and the Industry as Organizations Navigate New AI Era of Cybersecurity
Which AI vendor pages relate to Visa?
Featurespace
Acquired by Visa (NYSE: V), deal agreed September 26, 2024 and completed December 19, 2024, for a purchase consideration of $946 million (Visa's FY2025 10-K); now part of Visa's Risk and Identity Solutions business. Previously venture-backed by Chrysalis Investments, Highland Europe, IP Group, Insight Partners, MissionOG and TTV Capital.
BioCatch
Private; majority-owned since 2024 by funds advised by Permira (via its Growth Opportunities fund), in a secondary deal valuing BioCatch at $1.3 billion. On August 3, 2026 Visa (NYSE: V) signed a definitive agreement to acquire BioCatch for $2.4 billion in cash, pending regulatory approvals and expected to close by the end of Visa's fiscal second quarter of 2027.
Neobank
BNPL & lending
Payments
Card network
Brokerage
Business finance & infrastructure
When Visa moves on AI, you'll read it here first.
when a bank, fintech or regulator moves on AI, it is in the next morning's brief · six sourced stories · 7 am ET · free
plus every tracker, bank and agent page update, the morning after · leave any morning