Visa CEO says AI Shopping has arrived — but not Agentic Payments

Artificial intelligence is already changing how consumers shop, but the leap from AI-assisted discovery to autonomous payments remains some distance away, according to Visa chief executive Ryan McInerney.

AI Shopping has arrived — but not Agentic Payments

Speaking at the Goldman Sachs Communacopia + Technology Conference, McInerney said consumers are increasingly using large language models to research, compare and select products. However, most still leave the AI environment and complete purchases directly with merchants.

The obstacle is less technological than behavioural: trust.

Three-quarters of consumers surveyed by Visa were uncomfortable allowing an AI agent to make payments autonomously using their money and financial information. Yet 61 per cent said they would trust such transactions if Visa were involved, rising above 70 per cent among people using LLMs at least weekly.

Payments’ Trust Layer Moves Upstream

For Visa, agentic commerce therefore creates an opportunity extending beyond transaction authorisation.

Merchants will need to determine whether an AI agent is legitimate and genuinely authorised to act for a customer. Consumers, meanwhile, need confidence that agents cannot exceed agreed permissions or expose payment credentials.

That pushes fraud prevention further upstream, from identifying suspicious transactions towards authenticating identities and establishing authority before payment occurs.

McInerney highlighted Visa’s planned $2.4bn acquisition of behavioural biometrics specialist BioCatch as part of this shift, arguing that identity has become a critical vulnerability for financial institutions.

Tokenisation provides another foundation. Visa increasingly views its global token infrastructure not simply as a replacement for card credentials, but as a distribution layer for identity, risk and transaction services.

Visa Looks Beyond the Card Transaction

The strategy comes as Visa targets payment flows beyond its traditional consumer card business.

McInerney estimated that around $2tn of addressable consumer payments remain outside electronic networks, much of it in cash and cheques. Visa Direct, meanwhile, now connects 18bn endpoints spanning bank accounts, cards and wallets, supporting person-to-person, business-to-consumer and consumer-to-business payments.

Higher-value cross-border B2B transactions represent another opportunity, with stablecoins potentially becoming part of the infrastructure.

Visa sees particular stablecoin demand in markets where access to US dollars through conventional banking channels is expensive or restricted, alongside cross-border remittances and commercial payments.

Its acquisition of cloud-native processing platform Pismo similarly expands Visa deeper into issuer infrastructure as banks and fintechs modernise technology stacks.

Agentic Commerce Becomes an Infrastructure Contest

The emerging picture is therefore broader than AI agents automatically buying products.

As commerce becomes increasingly automated, competition is shifting towards the infrastructure determining identity, credentials, permissions, routing and settlement.

Visa’s challenge is to ensure that whether value ultimately moves through cards, accounts, wallets or stablecoins, its technology remains embedded in the transaction.

AI shopping may already be here. The more consequential battle will be over who consumers and merchants trust when machines are finally permitted to pay.