Visa Launches Agentic Ready Program to Help Banks Test AI Agent Payments

Visa is expanding beyond its role as a credit and debit card transaction network into value-added merchant services, focusing on agentic AI, stablecoins and digital assets. The shift could determine whether Visa can reduce its reliance on card-processing fees as payment methods rapidly evolve, while generating revenue from fraud prevention, data analytics and new settlement tools.

Visa executives recently said the company is advancing agentic commerce, in which AI agents can independently search, shop and make payments. It is also using AI to detect and block payment fraud such as romance scams while developing stablecoin applications. Reports did not provide investment figures, a formal launch date or projected new revenue, and Visa has yet to disclose a specific timetable.

Alchemy has launched AgentCard, allowing AI agents to transact over Visa’s payment network without requiring a person to handle each transaction. The service uses payment tokens issued by Visa while retaining existing credit-card rewards, protections and credit limits, showing that agentic commerce is moving beyond automated shopping to actual payments.

The latest development gives AgentCard access to the Visa network. Each AI agent can be assigned a dedicated email address and phone number for merchant identity verification and transaction processing. Alchemy has not disclosed an exact launch date, partner card issuer, transaction amounts or credit limits, and has so far focused on outlining the service’s features.

Visa is a major global payments network, while OpenAI develops generative AI and AI agent technology. Their strategic alliance aims to enable AI agents not only to process information but also to autonomously complete payments and financial transactions under preset rules, creating trusted payment infrastructure for automated commerce.

Visa has unveiled Programmable Money Rails and is integrating OpenAI technology to advance the AI agent economy. The framework is expected to allow agents to initiate and execute payments autonomously. Reports have not disclosed a formal launch date, the value of the partnership, transaction limits or the first institutions set to adopt the system.

Visa, one of the world’s leading payment networks, derives revenue from payment volumes, cross-border spending and transaction volumes. The 2026 FIFA World Cup is expected to spur travel and card spending. Over the longer term, agentic AI systems capable of independently searching, making decisions and paying could create a new gateway to digital commerce and a new payments market.

On April 28, 2026, Visa reported fiscal second-quarter results for the period ended March 31. Net revenue reached $11.2 billion, up 17% year on year, beating expectations and marking its fastest quarterly growth since 2022. Chief Executive Ryan McInerney said the summer World Cup was expected to boost spending, while the company would continue building an agentic commerce ecosystem.

Agentic commerce allows software to search for, select and purchase products with a user’s authorization, making identity verification, payment authorization and risk controls critical. Visa launched Visa Intelligent Commerce on April 30, 2025, to provide payment APIs to AI platforms. Connect further integrates the connection process, lowering adoption barriers for merchants, agent developers and payment service providers.

Visa unveiled Intelligent Commerce Connect on April 8, 2026. Through a single integration with the Visa Acceptance Platform, businesses can initiate payments, tokenize credentials, set spending controls and perform authentication, with support for APIs from Visa and other card networks. Seven companies, including AWS, Mesh and Payabli, are piloting the service, with a broader rollout planned during 2026. Visa did not disclose pricing or an investment amount.

Visa and Mastercard, whose businesses have long centered on card transactions and fees, are extending Agentic AI into corporate operations and payment back offices. Visa is targeting dispute handling, while Mastercard is serving small and medium-sized businesses that lack full management teams. The initiatives reflect the card networks' shift toward becoming technology service providers.

On March 10, 2026, Mastercard launched Virtual C-Suite, beginning with a virtual CFO that analyzes cash flow and risk. Visa and ServiceNow are advancing a dispute-management system that routes and prioritizes cases and organizes documents. Issuers write off an average of $3.3 million annually and spend more than 360 hours preparing for audits, while Mastercard estimates that each case costs $9.08–$10.32.

AI agents are moving beyond recommendations to make purchases, call APIs and buy computing resources, but existing checkout systems are still designed for humans. Stripe and payments blockchain Tempo therefore jointly developed the open Machine Payments Protocol, or MPP, allowing agents to receive payment requirements, authorize payments and access services in a single request. Visa’s integration with existing card networks is significant because it brings machine micropayments into mainstream payment and risk-control systems.

Stripe and Tempo released the MPP specification on March 18, 2026, alongside the launch of Tempo’s mainnet. Visa released a card-based specification and SDK the same day and enabled them on the Visa Acceptance Platform, with support for tokenization, authentication and agent identity verification. Visa said on July 14 that MPP had settled about $25,000 across roughly 115,000 transactions in the weeks since its mid-March launch, averaging less than 1 cent per transaction.

Agentic commerce allows AI agents, with consumers’ authorization, to search for products, place orders and make payments. Visa and Banco Santander integrated Visa Intelligent Commerce (VIC) with existing payment infrastructure to test consent capture, data security and interoperability across merchants and payment networks. A Visa survey found that more than 70% of Latin American consumers already use AI during the shopping process, making transaction controls and consumer protection critical to scaling the technology.

Visa and Banco Santander announced on March 12, 2026, that they had completed Latin America’s first end-to-end AI agent payment pilots across five markets: Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Mexico and Uruguay. An AI agent bought chocolate in Brazil and books in the other four countries, completing the payments within existing regulatory and authorization parameters. The companies did not disclose transaction values or the number of participants.