VISA Is Pioneering the Foundations for a World of ‘Agentic Commerce’

In the rapidly evolving landscape of digital payments, Visa has emerged as a frontrunner in “Agentic Commerce,” a term referring to AI-powered systems where intelligent agents act autonomously on behalf of consumers to handle tasks like product discovery, price comparison, and secure purchases.

Launched as part of Visa Intelligent Commerce (VIC) earlier in 2025, this initiative leverages Visa’s decades of expertise in AI and secure payments to create a trusted ecosystem for AI agents.

With investments exceeding $3 billion in AI and data infrastructure, Visa is positioning itself to transform e-commerce, projecting that by 2028, 25% of all digital storefront interactions will be initiated by AI agents. This article summarizes the latest developments, partnerships, technologies, and future outlook based on recent announcements.

Key Recent Developments and Partnerships

Visa has made significant strides in Agentic Commerce over the past few months, with a flurry of announcements in December 2025 highlighting real-world progress.

On December 18, 2025, Visa reported completing hundreds of secure, agent-initiated transactions in collaboration with key partners, marking a milestone toward mainstream adoption. These pilots, conducted in closed beta in the U.S., involved end-to-end purchases for both consumers and businesses. Notable examples include:

• Skyfire: Enabled AI agents to purchase Bose headphones via Consumer Reports’ shopping agent using browser automation.
• Nekuda: Facilitated fashion buys on apps like Gensmo from brands such as Fabrique and Honeylove, and integrated with Henry Labs for one-click checkouts on Price.com.
• PayOS: Supported agent-driven checkouts for BeyondStyle with luxury retailer Jomashop.
• Ramp: Applied VIC to B2B payments, automating corporate bill pay with cashback rewards.

Globally, Visa boasts over 100 partners, with more than 30 actively building in the VIC sandbox and over 20 agents integrating directly. Recent collaborations underscore this expansion:

• Akamai Technologies (December 17, 2025): Visa partnered with Akamai to integrate the Trusted Agent Protocol into Akamai’s cloud platform, enhancing fraud prevention through edge-based behavioral intelligence and bot protection. This aims to authenticate AI agents across 175 million Visa-accepting merchants worldwide.
• Fiserv (December 22, 2025): In one of the most recent announcements, Fiserv and Visa teamed up to deploy the Trusted Agent Protocol across Fiserv’s merchant network. This enables secure agentic transactions, combining Visa’s authentication with Fiserv’s scalable integration for merchants, independent software vendors (ISVs), and independent sales organizations (ISOs).
• Amazon and AWS (Early December 2025): Visa collaborated with Amazon Web Services to make VIC tools available in the AWS Marketplace, empowering developers to build agentic solutions. This includes connections to providers in retail, travel, and B2B sectors, with partners like Expedia Group and Intuit. Separately, Amazon and Visa are developing agentic tools for autonomous transactions. Read more in this expert blog.
• Regional Expansions: In the Middle East, Visa is working with Aldar in the UAE to enable AI agents for handling repetitive payments like real estate fees. Pilot programs are slated for Asia Pacific and Europe in early 2026, with Latin America and the Caribbean following within the next year.

These partnerships come amid a 300% surge in AI-powered bot traffic over the past year, with the commerce sector facing over 25 billion AI bot requests in just two months, as per Akamai’s 2025 Digital Fraud and Abuse Report.

Core Technologies Powering Visa’s Innovations

At the heart of Visa’s Agentic Commerce strategy is the Trusted Agent Protocol (TAP), introduced in October 2025 with over 10 initial partners. This open framework uses existing web infrastructure to authenticate AI agents, verify consumer intent, and securely process transactions while distinguishing legitimate agents from malicious bots. It allows agents to transmit mission details, user visibility, and payment info without major infrastructure changes.

TAP is an open, ecosystem-led cryptographic framework designed to enable secure and trusted interactions in agentic commerce, where autonomous AI agents perform tasks such as product browsing, price comparison, and purchase completion on behalf of users.

Built on the HTTP Message Signatures standard (RFC 9421) and existing web infrastructure, it facilitates a minimal-disruption “trust handshake” in which approved AI agents—onboarded through Visa’s Intelligent Commerce program and equipped with unique cryptographic keys—sign their HTTP requests with context-bound, time-limited, and replay-proof digital signatures that convey agent intent, optional consumer recognition data, and tokenized payment credentials.

Merchants (or their infrastructure providers) verify these signatures using the agent’s registered public key, confidently distinguishing legitimate shopping agents from malicious bots amid surging AI-driven traffic, while enabling streamlined checkouts, enhanced fraud prevention, personalized experiences, and seamless transaction processing across Visa’s global network of over 175 million merchant locations.

Developed in collaboration with partners like Cloudflare, Shopify, Microsoft, and Stripe, with recent integrations by Akamai and Fiserv, the protocol is openly available on the Visa Developer Center and GitHub, interoperable with emerging standards, and positioned as a foundational building block for making agentic commerce safe, scalable, and mainstream by 2026.

Other key technologies include:

• Tokenization and Payment Credentials: Agent-specific tokens replace sensitive card details, supporting lifecycle management and instant revocation. This extends to “Know Your Agent” (KYA) concepts, verifying cryptographic identities and setting boundaries like spend limits and merchant categories.
• Visa Payment Passkey: Enables biometric authentication for both humans and agents.
• Intelligent Personalization and Fraud Prevention: AI algorithms analyze preferences and data for tailored recommendations, while enhanced controls assess transaction authenticity in real-time, blocking risks like impersonation or data tampering.
• Secure Autonomous Payments: Incorporates consent frameworks for user control and operational intelligence for dispute resolution.

Visa’s infrastructure analyzes over 500 data points on up to 83,000 transactions per second, having blocked $40 billion in fraud in 2023 alone. The goal is seamless integration, making checkout “recede into the background” through voice or conversational interfaces.

Timelines and Future Plans

Visa remains on track to deliver secure, personalized AI-enabled commerce by early 2026, with agent-initiated purchases expected to hit mainstream by the 2026 holiday season. Current pilots are live in production, and global expansions are accelerating. Research indicates 47% of U.S. shoppers already use AI for tasks like price comparisons, with 48% open to agents completing purchases.

Looking ahead, Visa envisions millions of consumers using AI agents by 2026, powering use cases like travel booking, personalized retail, and smart home automation (e.g., autonomous grocery reordering). The company plans to establish core trust standards through industry bodies for global consistency, while competing with players like PayPal, Fiserv, Stripe, and Mastercard. Emphasis will be on low-code adoption for merchants, ensuring agentic commerce scales without added complexity or risks.

Conclusion

Visa’s aggressive push into Agentic Commerce signals a pivotal shift in how we shop, blending AI innovation with unbreakable trust in payments. By forging strategic partnerships and deploying cutting-edge protocols, Visa is not just adapting to the AI boom but leading it. As AI agents become ubiquitous, these developments promise a more efficient, secure, and personalized commerce experience for consumers and businesses alike.

With early 2026 on the horizon, the era of truly intelligent shopping is closer than ever.