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Visa Inc. announced early Thursday hundreds of artificial intelligence-based and agent-initiated transactions have been completed in collaboration with partners, a milestone the card network says is a signal that agentic commerce is poised to become mainstream in 2026.
By the start of the next year’s holiday shopping season, Visa predicts millions of consumers will use AI agents to complete holiday purchases.
Visa points to recent research it conducted that reveals 47% of shoppers in the United States now use AI tools for at least one shopping task, such as price comparisons or personalized recommendations.
“Today’s announcement proves that AI agents can not only assist consumers with shopping but can actually complete transactions securely in live environments,” a Visa spokesperson says by email. “[The announcement] marks a turning point where the industry can confidently move from experimentation to scaled deployment, supported by Visa’s global network, security leadership, and standards work.”
Visa, which earlier this year launched its Visa Intelligent Commerce platform, says more than 30 of its 100 agentic commerce partners are actively building apps using Visa Intelligent Commerce and that more than 20 AI agents and agent enablers are integrating directly with its agentic commerce platform.
In the United States, AI agent-enabling partners, including Skyfire, Nekuda, PayOS Inc., and Ramp Business Corp., are executing end-to-end consumer and B2B purchases in closed pilots.
Visa’s Intelligent Commerce platform enables consumers to tap AI agents to shop and make purchases for consumers via AI platforms and use a Visa credential at more than 150 million Visa-accepting merchants for payment.
Visa recently expanded its Intelligent Commerce framework to accelerate adoption of agentic commerce. As a result, pilot programs in Asia Pacific and Europe are expected to launch in early 2026. In Latin America and the Caribbean, Visa says it is ensuring readiness for consumers to make AI-driven purchases at leading merchants in the region over the next year. In the Middle East, Visa is working with Aldar to allow customers in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to use AI agents to pay repetitive fees like real-estate service charges.
“Agentic commerce requires coordination across merchants, AI developers, platforms, security partners, and payment networks. No single organization can build this ecosystem alone,” the Visa spokesperson says.
To begin preparing for agentic commerce, Visa recommends businesses ensure their checkout systems, security tools, and fraud defenses are aligned with emerging standards like the Trusted Agent Protocol.
In related news, e-commerce platform provider BigCommerce Inc. announced it will integrate Stripe Inc.’s Agentic Commerce Suite. Stripe launched its agentic commerce suite earlier this month
The integration is expected to offer BigCommerce merchants tools to provide a “full agentic shopping experience for shoppers” in which they can “discover, research and buy all within the AI platform,” a BigCommerce spokesperson says by email.
“Meanwhile, merchants get to maintain their merchant-of-record status, using their existing catalogs, order systems, and operational processes, and keeping control of customer relationships,” the BigCommerce spokesperson adds.
BigCommerce, which also partners with PayPal on agentic commerce, opted to add Stripe as a partner to provide its merchants more choice when it comes to working with AI platform providers.
“Our merchants need flexibility to show up where their customers are, and they rely on us to enable them to work with the vendors they want to put together the best tech stack for their businesses,” the BigCommerce spokesperson says.
One factor driving agentic commerce is that consumers, especially younger generations, like the technology’s conversational, context-aware, and direct answers as opposed to being directed to a link.
“That makes search faster, more efficient, and more effective,” the BigCommerce spokesperson says. “It’s important for merchants to provide a fast, seamless way for the shopper to then move from discovery to purchase without having to click extra links or go through a lengthy checkout process.”
Agentic commerce is “here to stay,” the BigCommerce spokesperson adds.
