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Visa Inc. late Wednesday introduced Visa Intelligent Commerce, an artificial intelligence-based shopping service that enables AI agents to shop and make purchases for consumers. AI agents are software programs that use artificial intelligence to gather information and take actions to achieve clearly defined goals with a minimum of human intervention.
The new service, introduced at Visa’s Global Product Drop event, will enable consumers to tap AI agents via AI platforms to use a Visa credential at more than 150 million Visa-accepting merchants for payment. Visa has issued 4.8 billion credentials. The new service is expected to streamline the shopping process for consumers, Visa says.
To help boost adoption of AI-based commerce, Visa is working with AI platform providers and brands that consumers and merchants interact with daily, including Anthropic PBC, IBM Corp., Microsoft Corp., Mistral AI SAS, OpenAI, Inc., Perplexity AI, Stripe Inc., and Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd.
“For any AI commerce use case to take hold, the payment is a critical enabler of success. If there is no payment, there is no commerce. That’s the expertise and trust that Visa brings,” Visa chief executive Ryan McInerny says in a statement.
The use of AI agents in commerce is expected to streamline common transaction-driven tasks, such as ordering groceries online, as well as sophisticated search and decision-making, such as making restaurant reservations or buying concert show tickets.
“Visa Intelligent Commerce will reshape e-commerce by giving merchants the opportunity to meet customers right at the moment of intent,” Martin Balaam, chief executive and co-founder of Pimberly, an AI-powered network, says by email.
By contrast, search engines require merchants to rely on the consumer to plug in the correct keyword or click through a catalog to meet them at the moment of intent, Balaam says.
“[That’s] a bit more of a crapshoot,” Balaam adds. “AI has the ability to pick up on subtle conversational clues from users, such as ‘show me sustainable yoga mats with free shipping,’ meaning they will surface the right SKU based on the user’s request and help brands stand out. It’s really more akin to a personal shopper that knows your preferences than scrolling on Google or Amazon.”
The push to support AI agents is gaining momentum. Earlier this week, PayPal Holdings Inc. announced the availability of software developer tools to enable agent-based AI experiences. Consumers will be able to use AI agents to pay for purchases, track shipments, manage invoices, and other related shopping tasks, the company said.
Google Cloud introduced its Agent to Agent Protocol, which can be designed to allow merchants to integrate their Gemini-powered chat experiences with PayPal’s commerce capabilities.
And Amazon Web Services showcased how businesses can transform an idea into a digital campaign using agentic workflows by integrating with PayPal Agent Toolkit. Azure AI showcased how businesses can use its platform to create personalized commerce experiences intended to enhance shopping.
Mastercard Inc. earlier this week announced Mastercard Agent Pay, which enables AI agents to handle payments for consumers. The program leverages Mastercard’s tokenization capabilities and introduces new Agentic Tokens to ensure transactions with the AI commerce landscape, the network says. Mastercard Agentic Tokens secure card-on-file and Mastercard Payment Passkeys, as well as programmable payments, such as recurring expenses and subscriptions.
Mastercard is partnering with Microsoft on new use cases to scale agentic commerce and plans to work with other leading AI platforms. The network is also partnering with IBM to leverage its watsonx Orchestrate product to business-to-business use cases for agentic commerce.
“The biggest way that AI agents will change e-commerce is that you can say goodbye to ten blue links, as search engines give way to intent understanding,” Balaam adds. “The recommendations from agents will be much more personalized, based on the AI detecting user patterns and preferences.”
