Visa, Lianlian Complete Live B2B AI-Agent Payment

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.

AI agents are evolving from providing recommendations to searching, making decisions and paying on consumers’ behalf. The shift requires the payments industry to address authorization, identity verification, risk controls and consumer control. Building on Visa Intelligent Commerce, Visa Agentic Ready allows issuers to test agentic transactions over existing card networks, moving the concept into controlled, real-world payment flows.

Visa launched the program in Europe on March 17, 2026, with 21 issuers participating, including Barclays, HSBC UK and Revolut. It expanded to Latin America and the Caribbean on April 29, followed by 10 Asia-Pacific markets with more than 50 partners on April 30. Taiwan’s initial group includes nine issuers, among them Cathay United Bank, CTBC Bank and E.SUN Bank. Visa did not disclose an investment amount.

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.

Cross-border procurement typically requires businesses to coordinate supplier discovery, product selection, order creation and payments across different markets. Lianlian and UnionPay International aim to streamline that chain by combining Lianlian’s artificial-intelligence platform with UnionPay International’s cross-border payment network. The partnership highlights growing efforts by payment providers to use autonomous software agents in corporate workflows while retaining human oversight for financial controls.

The companies recently signed a strategic cooperation agreement to jointly develop an AI Agent payment solution for global procurement. The system is designed to automate supplier matching, product selection and payment-order generation, with corporate finance teams retaining final approval before funds are released. Lianlian and UnionPay International have not disclosed a launch date, investment amount or expected transaction volume for the service.

Visa and Artemis examined the rise of machine-native payments as artificial-intelligence agents evolve from advisory tools into entities capable of placing orders and purchasing services autonomously. Protocols including x402 and MPP are emerging to handle the high-frequency, low-value transactions generated by those agents, challenging banks and card networks to rethink payment infrastructure, identity controls, risk management and regulatory compliance.

The research found that AI-agent activity across x402 and MPP generated more than 110 million transactions during the 12 months covered by the report. The volume underscores the rapid expansion of micropayments as autonomous software becomes an active participant in commerce. Visa said established payment providers risk disintermediation unless they develop systems that can process agent-led transactions instantly and cheaply while preserving verification, consumer safeguards and compliance oversight.

Generative AI is evolving from answering questions to shopping, subscribing to services and initiating transactions on users’ behalf. That shift exposes a gap in payment infrastructure built around human cardholders and conventional merchant checkouts. Visa and Mastercard are developing dedicated rails for AI agents, while stablecoin and cryptocurrency protocols are targeting micropayments, machine-to-machine settlement and the identity and authorization controls autonomous commerce requires.

The latest reported tally as of Aug. 6, 2026, put AI-agent payment volume at only about $136 million, underscoring how early the market remains. Visa and Mastercard are competing to control the gateway for automated transactions, while onchain providers are pitching programmable, low-cost stablecoin payments for small purchases. Both camps are seeking to solve a central constraint: enabling an AI agent to prove its identity and spending authority before money moves.

Generative AI is moving beyond answering questions toward acting on a user’s behalf, including selecting goods and initiating payments. That shift raises new questions over consent, authentication, fraud controls and accountability. Visa and Bank of China (Hong Kong), or BOCHK, are testing agent-initiated commerce in a controlled Hong Kong environment to assess whether automated transactions can be executed securely.

The proof of concept is being conducted under the GenA.I. Sandbox++ initiative. BOCHK’s AI agent will connect with the BOC Pay+ ecosystem and merchant platforms, while Visa supplies the underlying secure payment infrastructure needed to automate transactions. The announcement did not disclose a test launch date, transaction value, number of participating merchants or timetable for a commercial rollout.