Visa is getting ready for AI software that shops and pays for you

Visa is preparing for a world where software buys things on your behalf, and its first job is proving that software has your permission. On an earnings call on Tuesday, Oct. 27, Visa said it expects its nearly 50 AI partners in production to double in the coming months.

What Visa is building

CEO Ryan McInerney described the work needed to identify an AI agent, connect it to a customer and confirm that its spending follows the customer's instructions. An agent is software that acts for you. "It is clear that in agentic, trust is the biggest barrier to scale," he told analysts.

He named business payments as an early use, including automated bill payment and invoice settlement. Visa is also using agents inside the company. More than 60% of its product development and engineering teams have adopted an agentic toolchain.

Why Visa thinks it is ready

Visa points to its existing network. Tokenization swaps a real card number for a stand-in code, and more than half of available credentials and more than 60% of online transactions are now tokenized. Visa says it can adapt that system for agent purchases. Other figures from the quarter:

• Visa's credentials reached 5.2 billion, up 6%.
• Tap-to-pay is 75% of in-person Visa purchases in the U.S. and nearly 85% worldwide.
• Tap to Phone passed 1 billion transactions a year across more than 25 million devices.

Money moving in other ways

Visa Direct, its money transfer service, processed more than 15 billion transactions worth about $1.5 trillion in fiscal 2026. Its stablecoin service, which lets clients fund payouts with digital currency, moved from pilot to commercial production. Net revenue rose 13% to $12.1 billion for the quarter. For fiscal 2027, Visa plans to keep investing in agentic commerce, tokenization, stablecoins and business payments.

What is not known yet

The material does not name the AI partners or say when everyday shoppers will be able to use agents. It also does not explain what the checks will look like. For now, the signal is clear: if an AI tool ever pays bills or orders supplies for you, expect steps that confirm it follows your instructions.