Visa Adds New Fraud Controls as Virtual Cards Move Deeper Into B2B Payments

Visa is expanding its commercial payments capabilities with new fraud controls, supplier analytics and agentic payment tools as virtual cards become more deeply embedded in automated business workflows.

Visa Adds New Fraud Controls

The company has introduced Visa Commercial Fraud Solutions, a new suite designed to help issuers and businesses verify suppliers, authenticate users and impose transaction-level controls before a commercial payment is approved.

The launch comes as virtual cards gain traction across B2B payments. Visa cites Juniper Research estimates that global B2B virtual card payment volumes could reach $14.6 trillion by 2029, representing 83% of the wider virtual card market.

Controls Move Closer to the Individual Transaction

Visa Commercial Fraud Solutions is built around three stages of the payment process.

Supplier validation is intended to help ensure funds are being sent to the intended business, while virtual card users can be authenticated using 3-D Secure.

Businesses can also set detailed transaction parameters covering spend limits, merchant categories, geographic location and timing.

The approach reflects a broader shift in commercial payments. As more processes become automated, fraud controls increasingly need to move from general account-level protections towards specific permissions attached to each payment.

Visa Commercial Payment Controls are already available in supported markets, while supplier validation and virtual authentication remain in pilot ahead of wider availability in 2027.

AI Targets Commercial Card Growth

Visa is also introducing SESA 2.0, an upgraded version of its Supplier Enablement Spend Analytics platform.

The service combines AI-driven supplier scoring with Visa commercial payments data, buyer benchmarks and business-value modelling to identify suppliers that may be more likely to accept card payments.

Visa says the earlier version of SESA has helped financial institutions identify more than $600 billion in potentially cardable spend.

The aim is to give issuers a more targeted way to expand commercial card acceptance rather than relying on broad supplier outreach.

Agentic Payments Raise New Governance Questions

Visa is simultaneously testing how AI agents could execute business payments. A live pilot with BILL and Billtrust allows authorised agents to initiate and complete approved invoice payments through supplier portals using Visa Intelligent Commerce and the Trusted Agent Protocol.

The system is designed to establish the agent’s identity, confirm its authority and ensure transactions remain within predefined business rules.

That addresses one of the most important questions emerging from agentic commerce: how to give software permission to spend without granting it unrestricted access to company funds.

The answer may lie in tightly controlled virtual credentials.

As automation moves from invoice approval to payment execution, the strategic role of virtual cards is expanding from a payment method into a programmable control layer for B2B commerce.