What is Visa doing in agentic commerce?
Visa's agentic commerce program is Visa Intelligent Commerce, launched on April 30, 2025, which lets AI agents find and pay with tokenized Visa credentials; Anthropic, IBM, Microsoft, Mistral AI, OpenAI, Perplexity, Stripe and Samsung were named collaborators. It added an MCP server in September 2025, the Trusted Agent Protocol with Cloudflare in October 2025, and Intelligent Commerce Connect in April 2026, one integration across four agent protocols. Visa then moved to live transactions by region: DBS became the first Asia Pacific issuer to pilot it on February 16, 2026; Santander and Visa completed pilot purchases in five Latin American markets on March 12, 2026; and on July 2, 2026 Visa said AI agents were buying from independent merchants in Europe with more than 30 issuers. The Agentic Ready program, launched in Europe on March 17, 2026, gives issuers a structured way to test agent payments. Visa has also written agentic commerce into its card rules: the April 18, 2026 edition requires an Agentic Payment Provider to enroll in Visa Intelligent Commerce, verify the cardholder's identity and obtain the cardholder's acknowledgement that they are responsible for the agent's actions. A June 10, 2026 partnership brings Visa payments to OpenAI. McInerney called agentic commerce "a when, not an if" on July 28, 2026. Visa has not published agentic transaction counts, volumes or revenue.[1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11]
Data as of Oct 22, 2026 · Visa profile updated Oct 22, 2026 · 25 sources cited on this page · 52 fintechs profiled on this site · Markdown
Where have AI agents completed live payments on Visa, and with whom?
Visa and partner announcements in date order. Visa describes most as pilots or controlled production tests.
| Region | What happened | Partners | Date |
|---|---|---|---|
| United States | Hundreds of controlled, real-world agent-initiated transactions; more than 100 partners, over 30 building in the sandbox | Skyfire, Nekuda, PayOS and Ramp in closed beta | December 18, 2025[12] |
| Asia Pacific | DBS became the first issuer in the region to pilot Visa Intelligent Commerce, validating AI-ready credentials, authentication and payment signals | DBS Bank | February 16, 2026[5] |
| Latin America | Pilot agentic purchases in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Mexico and Uruguay; agents bought chocolates in Brazil and books elsewhere | Santander | March 12, 2026[6] |
| Europe and UK | Agentic Ready launched, first phase focused on issuer readiness with controlled production-grade tests at selected merchants | European issuers | March 17, 2026[8] |
| Global | Agentic Ready extended from more than 20 partners in the UK and Europe to 85+ partners in Asia Pacific and Latin America | Issuers and payment partners | April 29, 2026[13] |
| Europe | AI agents completing purchases on independent merchant websites in live environments, with more than 30 European issuers | Merchants including lastminute.com, Frasers, Cleverbridge and BrickDepot | July 2, 2026[7] |
| United States (B2B) | First live pilot of an AI agent paying supplier invoices with tokenized credentials, registered through the Trusted Agent Protocol and Agentic Directory | BILL, Billtrust | October 20, 2026[14] |
What has Visa built for agents and merchants, and who is it working with?
| Item | What it does | Date |
|---|---|---|
| Live pilot in the 10-K | A 2025 pilot program processed live agentic token transactions in e-commerce and enterprise environments | November 6, 2025[15] |
| Merchant agent toolkit | Visa said it was powering live agentic transactions and had released a toolkit for developers to embed its solutions in agentic workflows | October 28, 2025[16] |
| Intelligent Commerce Connect | A protocol- and token-vault-agnostic on-ramp across Trusted Agent Protocol, Machine Payments Protocol, Agentic Commerce Protocol and Universal Commerce Protocol, including non-Visa cards | April 8, 2026[4][17] |
| Visa CLI | A proof of concept letting a developer pay for digital services with a Visa credential from a command line; McInerney said it shows micro transactions on cards | April 28, 2026[17] |
| OpenAI | Strategic collaboration to enable Visa payments in agentic commerce across OpenAI | June 10, 2026[10] |
| Agent Score, Agentic Directory, Token Assurance Framework | Merchant site readiness scoring (with New Generation), a directory of verified agents and merchants, and infrastructure to make agent-initiated transactions transparent | June to July 2026[18][11] |
| Meta | Visa Intelligent Commerce powering new ways to pay with Visa tokens on Facebook and Instagram | July 28, 2026[11] |
| Know Your Agent | Visa, Mastercard and Ant International began work on a framework to identify and monitor AI agents across networks | September 17, 2026[19] |
What rules govern agent payments on Visa, who is responsible, and what is not disclosed?
Visa's April 18, 2026 rules define an Agentic Payment Provider and an Agentic Transaction. A provider must enroll in Visa Intelligent Commerce and register with Visa, obtain tokens from Visa or an Agentic Payment Enabler for stored credentials, and must not run agentic transactions in a card-present environment or aggregate several into one.[9]
Before acting, the provider must obtain the cardholder's consent to provision a token and to use their payment instruction, state when that instruction expires, "obtain Cardholder acknowledgement that they are responsible for actions taken by the Agentic Payment Provider", and verify the cardholder's identity under Visa Intelligent Commerce specifications. When buying it must "use only the Cardholder-defined criteria". The same edition allowed digital wallets to be used in agentic transactions.[9]
The FY2025 10-K says the interplay of payments, privacy and AI rules "may create uncertainty around compliance obligations and potential liability exposure" as sellers, fintechs and AI developers enter agentic commerce, and that scaling could bring more erroneous or disputed payments and chargebacks. Visa's July 2026 European transactions were described as operating "in line with European regulatory requirements".[15][7]
On demand, a Harris Poll survey for Visa in September 2026 found only 23% of U.S. consumers trust generative AI to handle payments for them, while 61% would trust Visa with agentic transactions. McInerney said on the July 2026 call that adoption depends on consumers trusting that an agent is authorised and that protections exist when something goes wrong.[20][21]
What is not disclosed: the number or value of agent-initiated transactions, how many agents are registered as Agentic Payment Providers, dispute and fraud rates on agentic transactions, how losses on disputed agent purchases are allocated beyond the cardholder acknowledgement in the rules, and revenue from Visa Intelligent Commerce.[9][15]
What does the Visa profile record on this topic?
The rows below are the entries of the Visa AI strategy profile that bear on this page, as of Oct 22, 2026; the profile holds the full record of 17 dated moves, 11 use cases and 24 sources.
| Use case | What the record shows | Status | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Visa Intelligent Commerce | 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 | [1][12][4] |
| Agentic B2B invoice payments (BILL, Billtrust) | A live pilot in which a Trusted-Agent-Protocol-authenticated BILL Payment Agent initiates and completes buyer invoice payments through Billtrust supplier portals without human authentication steps. | Pilot | [14] |
| SESA 2.0 supplier spend analytics | AI-driven supplier scoring and predictive insights help financial institutions identify commercial-card growth opportunities; SESA has helped uncover more than $600 billion in potential cardable spend since launch. | In production | [22] |
| Large Transaction Model | 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 | [18] |
| BioCatch behavioral intelligence (pending) | 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 | [23][24] |
| Date | Move | Detail | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Oct 21, 2026 | SESA 2.0 and Visa Commercial Fraud Solutions announced | SESA 2.0 (Supplier Enablement Spend Analytics) adds AI-driven supplier scoring and predictive insights to help financial institutions identify commercial-card growth opportunities (SESA has helped uncover more than $600 billion in potential cardable spend since launch); Visa Commercial Fraud Solutions is a new suite to validate suppliers, authenticate virtual-card payment activity and apply controls before approval, alongside the BILL/Billtrust agentic pilot. | [22] |
| Oct 20, 2026 | Visa, BILL and Billtrust launch first live pilot for AI-agent invoice payments | An authorized BILL Payment Agent, registered using Visa's Trusted Agent Protocol and Agentic Directory, uses tokenized payment credentials to initiate card payments for supplier invoices; Billtrust uses the Trusted Agent Protocol to authenticate the agent at the supplier portal, replacing CAPTCHA-style human checks, so BILL can complete the payment end-to-end on the customer's behalf. | [14] |
| Aug 3, 2026 | Agreement to acquire BioCatch for $2.4 billion | 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. | [23][24] |
| Jun 10, 2026 | OpenAI partnership, Agentic Directory and Large Transaction Model | 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. | [18][10] |
| Apr 29, 2026 | Agentic Ready programme expands globally | 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. | [13] |
| Apr 8, 2026 | Intelligent Commerce Connect unveiled | 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. | [4] |
| Oct 14, 2025 | Trusted Agent Protocol introduced | 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. | [3] |
| Apr 30, 2025 | Visa Intelligent Commerce launches | 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. | [1] |
| Mar 11, 2025 | Scam Disruption practice unveiled | 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. | [25] |
What is Visa Intelligent Commerce?
Visa's program, launched on April 30, 2025, that opens its network to developers of AI agents that find and buy for consumers, using tokenized Visa credentials. It has since added an MCP server, the Trusted Agent Protocol, Intelligent Commerce Connect, an Agentic Directory and Agent Score, and Visa's card rules now require agent payment providers to enroll in it.
Who is responsible if an AI agent makes a purchase on a Visa card?
Visa's April 2026 rules require an Agentic Payment Provider to obtain the cardholder's acknowledgement that they are responsible for actions taken by the provider, to verify the cardholder's identity and to buy only within cardholder-defined criteria. Visa has not published how disputed agent purchases are settled between issuers, merchants and providers.
Is Visa working with OpenAI on agentic commerce?
Yes. On June 10, 2026 Visa announced a strategic collaboration with OpenAI to enable secure Visa payments within agentic commerce, with Visa supplying its network, credentialing and security infrastructure. OpenAI was also among the collaborators named when Visa Intelligent Commerce launched in April 2025.
Where have AI agents made live Visa payments?
Visa reported hundreds of controlled U.S. agent transactions by December 2025, a DBS pilot in Singapore in February 2026, Santander pilots in five Latin American markets in March 2026, live purchases at independent European merchants with more than 30 issuers in July 2026, and a B2B invoice pilot with BILL and Billtrust in October 2026.
How big is Visa's agentic commerce business?
Visa has not said. McInerney told analysts in April 2026 that Visa was seeing "real transactions with Visa agentic tokens" and in July 2026 that agentic commerce is "a when, not an if", but Visa has published no count, dollar volume or revenue for agent-initiated payments as of October 2026.
- The Future is Here: Visa Announces New Era of Commerce Featuring AI
- Visa advances agentic commerce with MCP Server, Acceptance Agent Toolkit
- Visa Introduces Trusted Agent Protocol: An Ecosystem-Led Framework for AI Commerce
- Visa Opens the Door to AI-Driven Shopping for Businesses Worldwide
- DBS is First Bank in Asia Pacific to Pilot Visa Intelligent Commerce for Everyday Payments
- Santander and Visa Complete LatAm Agentic Transaction Use Instant Payments
- Visa and Banks Across Europe Reach the Next Phase of Agentic Commerce, Unlocking Secure Access to Merchants
- Visa Launches 'Agentic Ready' Programme to Advance Agentic Commerce in Europe
- Visa Core Rules and Visa Product and Service Rules (18 April 2026 edition)
- Visa Partners with OpenAI to Power the Next Generation of AI Commerce
- Earnings call transcript: Visa tops Q3 2026 estimates, raises outlook
- Visa and Partners Complete Secure AI Transactions, Setting the Stage for Mainstream Adoption in 2026
- Visa Announces Global Expansion of Agentic Ready Program
- Visa, BILL and Billtrust Launch First Live Pilot for Trusted AI Agent Payments Between Buyer and Supplier Platforms
- Visa Inc. Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended September 30, 2025
- Visa (V) Q4 2025 earnings call transcript
- Visa (V) Q2 2026 earnings call transcript
- Visa Announces New AI, Stablecoin and Token Innovations to Power Intelligent, Programmable Commerce at Visa Payments Forum
- Payment giants battle the fear factor in agentic commerce
- New Visa Research Finds Consumer Trust is Accelerating the Path to Agentic Commerce
- Visa Expands Money Movement as Card Spending Accelerates
- Visa Announces Enhanced Capabilities That Can Bring Trust and Control to the Future of Business Payments
- Visa to Acquire BioCatch
- Visa to buy cybersecurity firm BioCatch for $2.4 billion amid surge in AI-powered scams
- Visa Unveils its Scam Disruption Practice, Helping Protect Consumers and the Financial Ecosystem Globally
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