Visa is getting ready for AI assistants that shop and pay for you

Visa is getting its network ready for AI assistants that can buy things and pay bills on your behalf. The company says nearly 50 AI partners are already working with it in production and expects that number to double in the coming months. Visa also reported 5.2 billion payment credentials, up 6% at the end of its fiscal fourth quarter.

What changed

Visa calls this idea agentic commerce. It means software agents that make authorized purchases for a person or a business. Chief executive Ryan McInerney said trust is the biggest obstacle. The agent must prove who it is, be linked to a real customer, and show that each payment stays within the instructions it was given.

The business test

Visa is already testing this with business payments. A live pilot with BILL and Billtrust lets trusted AI agents start and complete approved invoice payments through supplier portals. It uses Visa Intelligent Commerce and its Trusted Agent Protocol.

Business payments may be the clearest early use. Invoice settlement, supplier checks and payment already follow set approval steps, so permissions can be tightly controlled.

The numbers behind it

Agents need secure, limited and verifiable access to payment credentials. That is where tokenisation comes in, which swaps a real card number for a stand-in code. Visa also pointed to growth in stablecoins, which are digital currencies built for payments.

• More than half of available credentials are tokenised.
• More than 60% of e-commerce transactions use tokenised credentials.
• Visa Direct processed more than 15 billion transactions, worth around $1.5 trillion, in fiscal 2026.
• Stablecoin settlement passed a $25 billion annualised run rate, up tenfold year on year.

What is not known yet

The material does not say when the invoice pilot will open to more businesses, what it will cost, or how spending limits will be set. It also does not say how many people will let an AI assistant pay on their behalf.

What to do

Business owners do not need to act yet. If an AI tool offers to pay invoices for you, ask how it proves its identity and what stops it from going beyond your instructions. Firm spending limits and an approval step for new suppliers are sensible starting points.