Visa Joins Push Toward AI Agent Payments
Hey Payments Fanatic!
An interesting and decisive shift is unfolding in commerce this week, as payments giants move in the same direction simultaneously. Following the recent agentic payment launches by Mastercard and PayPal, Visa has introduced Intelligent Commerce, a suite of tools that enables AI agents to make secure and reliable payments on behalf of consumers.
Visa’s new offering enables AI agents to handle transactions with ease and security. The company is rolling out AI-Ready Cards, tokenized digital credentials that verify an agent is acting with a consumer’s permission. Two new services support this: payment instructions that align user intent with agent actions, and contextual signals that add accuracy and protect against fraud.
Visa is working alongside companies such as OpenAI, Microsoft, Anthropic, Perplexity, Stripe, and others to bring these services to market. “Just like the shift from physical shopping to online, and from online to mobile, Visa is setting a new standard for a new era of commerce,” said Jack Forestell, Visa’s Chief Product & Strategy Officer.
Mastercard’s Agent Pay and PayPal’s Agent Toolkit echo many of Visa’s goals. The three payments companies aim to give AI agents the ability to initiate payments securely, whether through Mastercard’s collaboration with IBM and Microsoft, or PayPal’s developer tools that simplify integration into AI workflows.
While Mastercard focuses on tokenized payments and PayPal highlights full-service agent management, from invoicing to shipping, Visa appears to place equal weight on transaction control, security, and user-defined limits, positioning itself at the intersection of infrastructure and experience.
Read more global payment industry updates below 👇 and I'll be back with more on Monday!
Cheers,
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PAYMENTS NEWS
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