Visa will use artificial intelligence to transform its credit card services into a fully blown AI-driven shopping experience where you set the rules for what AI buys.
You might tell your credit card to purchase flowers between $20 to $40 for delivery next Monday, to buy an airline ticket to Cairns costing under $200 or snap up tickets to the next Paul McCartney concert whenever that occurs. You set the parameters.
Visa, the world’s second largest card payment organisation, is harnessing the new world of AI agents where AI-operated services can perform tasks on your behalf.
The idea that an AI agent can do your purchasing, ordering goods and services and paying for them, is a concept coming to fruition.
Some of the world’s largest tech companies have already adopted AI agents for their internal processes. They include Workday, Oracle, SAP, Salesforce and Amazon.
It was a matter of time before consumers can instruct an AI agent to purchase on their behalf. You set the rules around what is to be bought, and AI does the rest.
Visa’s move positions it at the centre of this new technology as the conduit of consumer shopping AI agents.
“Visa is bringing the power of its network and decades-long expertise to bring trust and security to AI-driven commerce,” Visa says in a statement.
“Introduced today at the Visa Global Product Drop, Visa Intelligent Commerce enables AI to find and buy. It is a groundbreaking new initiative that opens Visa’s payment network to the developers and engineers building the foundational AI agents transforming commerce.”
Visa’s Chief Product and Strategy Officer Jack Forestell says that people will have AI agents browse, select, purchase and manage on their behalf.
“These agents will need to be trusted with payments, not only by users, but by banks and sellers as well.
“Now, with Visa Intelligent Commerce, AI agents can find, shop and buy for consumers based on their pre-selected preferences. Each consumer sets the limits, and Visa helps manage the rest.”
Visa says it is working with Anthropic, IBM, Microsoft, Mistral AI, OpenAI, Perplexity, Samsung, Stripe and others on delivering its shopping agents.
Consumers will be issued with AI-ready cards that replace card details with tokenised digital credentials. The company says development includes bringing identity verification to AI commerce.
“Only the consumer can instruct the agent on what to do and when to activate a payment credential.”
Visa has foreshadowed that it will ask customers to share purchase data with the company. “Consumers share basic Visa spend and purchase insights with their consent to improve agent performance and personalize shopping recommendations,” it says.
The company wants to head off concerns that agents will buy goods that the customer doesn’t want, for example if the customer wrongly communicates their wishes or doesn’t realise their specifications could include goods and services they do not want.
It says consumers can set spending limits and conditions, providing clear guidelines for agent transactions. “Commerce signals are shared in real-time with Visa, enabling Visa to effect transaction controls and help to manage disputes.”
So be warned. Consumers could end up in some ding-dong battles with AI agents over what was ordered, with Visa mediating in the middle.
Originally published by Channel News Australia, 2 May 2025