Forward-looking: Visa plans to allow AI agents to conduct financial transactions on behalf of consumers, a move that could streamline and automate everyday purchases. The company is currently running pilot programs that connect its payment network to AI platforms developed by firms such as Anthropic, Microsoft, OpenAI, Perplexity, and Mistral, with broader adoption expected soon.

By bridging the gap between AI’s growing capabilities and secure payment processing, Visa is positioning itself to play a pivotal role in the next evolution of commerce.

This initiative, called Visa Intelligent Commerce, addresses a persistent challenge for AI-powered shopping assistants: securely completing purchases without human intervention.

While digital assistants are becoming adept at helping users discover and select products, the final step – making a payment – has typically required direct user involvement. Visa aims to close this gap by integrating its payment infrastructure with AI systems, enabling digital agents to finalize transactions.

As part of this effort, the company is introducing “AI-Ready Cards,” which use tokenized digital credentials to protect sensitive card information.

Over the past six months, Visa has collaborated with AI developers to tackle technical hurdles related to security, including authentication, user authorization, and spending controls. As part of this effort, the company is introducing “AI-Ready Cards,” which use tokenized digital credentials to protect sensitive card information. These measures are designed to ensure that AI agents can only make purchases within boundaries explicitly set by users.

Potential uses for these AI agents include handling routine tasks like buying groceries or booking travel. However, Visa anticipates that human involvement will remain central to more personalized or high-value shopping experiences, such as purchasing luxury goods.

Jack Forestell, Visa’s chief product and strategy officer, described the company’s efforts as “transformational, on the order of magnitude of the advent of e-commerce itself.” He noted that while early versions of AI commerce agents are effective at product discovery, they still face significant challenges when it comes to completing payments. “You get to this point where the agents literally just turn it back around and say, ‘OK, you go buy it,'” he said.

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Forestell also emphasized that consumers will retain control by setting specific spending limits and rules for their AI agents. “At first, the AI agents are likely to come back to buyers to confirm specific purchases, such as an airplane ticket. Over time, those agents might gain more autonomy – for example, ‘Go spend up to $1,500 on any airline to get me from A to B,'” he explained.

Developers participating in the program see further opportunities to personalize user experiences. With user consent, AI agents could access transaction histories to better understand individual preferences and tailor recommendations.

“Visa has the ability for a user to consent to share streams of their transaction history with us. When we generate a recommendation – say you’re asking, ‘What are the best laptops?’ – we would know what are other transactions you’ve made and the revealed preferences from that,” Dmitry Shevelenko, chief business officer at Perplexity, told The Associated Press.

Visa’s initiative comes at a time when the payments industry is shifting away from physical cards and card numbers. The company says its system is designed to reassure users, banks, and merchants that purchases made by AI agents are legitimate and secure, with safeguards in place for dispute resolution and fraud prevention.