The AI Upload: 44% Say AI Will Manage Payments; Visa Readies for AI-to-Business Commerce

As artificial intelligence continues to work its way into more facets of commerce, consumers and businesses may not be ready to go all in just yet. That day may come, however, if a report from Visa Inc. and another from Aevi prove accurate.

First, Aevi, a Germany-based payments platform, found that 59% of U.S. consumers it surveyed fear losing control over how or when payments are made if AI is managing them. Still, within the next decade, 44% of U.S. consumers believe AI agents will manage everyday payments for them.

That may seem contradictory because 51% of Americans say they wouldn’t feel comfortable with an organization using AI to manage money on their behalf.

“Agentic commerce isn’t being rejected because it uses AI,” Mike Camerling, Aevi chief executive, says in a statement. “It’s being rejected because it removes visibility, perceived control, and a clear moment of consent from payments. When people don’t understand what a system is doing or why a decision was made, trust erodes very quickly. This distinction appears repeatedly throughout the findings, however, trust breaks down when AI begins to operate invisibly, continuously, or without clear consent.”

Aevi’s survey, which canvassed 3,000 consumers in the United Kingdom and the United States, found that just 32% of U.S. consumers were comfortable letting AI select payment options, 50% were uncomfortable, and 18% were neutral on the question. That compares to 20% of U.K. consumers who were comfortable delegating that function, 62% being uncomfortable, and 18% neutral.

Further analysis of the responses indicates there are differences between the U.S. and U.K. respondents on the intensity of their discomfort. U.S. consumers had a much higher share of balanced “agree” responses, 24% versus 14%, which Aevi says points to conditional rather than enthusiastic acceptance.

“Even when the scenario is framed narrowly around checkout rather than AI broadly ‘managing payments,’ comfort remains limited,” the report says. “The hurdle is not AI itself, but the idea of delegating decision-making in the payment moment, even if only for a single transaction rather than an ongoing system managing finances more broadly.”

On the business side, the Visa survey says the next phase of commerce, which it calls business-to-AI (B2AI), is an emerging economic model that companies are preparing for.

A majority of businesses—53%—would allow AI agents to negotiate prices or terms directly with other AI agents, suggesting that AI-to-AI commerce is poised to grow, Visa says. The survey received responses from 2,000 U.S. adults and 512 U.S. business executives. More businesses—88%—were willing to provide pricing or inventory data to enterprise AI systems.

On the consumer side, 58% were comfortable with AI comparing prices and 55% were OK with AI applying discounts on purchases. Only 38% were comfortable with AI completing a purchase.