Visa’s unveiling of its Intelligent Commerce platform signals a major shift in how digital payments will function in a world increasingly shaped by AI. The company isn’t just updating payment tech—it’s building the foundational infrastructure for a future where AI agents, not humans, carry out a substantial share of online shopping and transactions.
With AI-generated traffic to retail sites skyrocketing by over 4,000% in a year, many businesses are unaware that their websites are already overwhelmed by automated agents. The challenge isn’t just volume—it’s the inability to reliably tell which AI visitors are legitimate customer assistants and which are malicious bots.
Visa’s early 2026 pilot in the Asia Pacific region gives merchants a year-plus runway to prepare for this new paradigm.
Why Asia Pacific is the Starting Point
Visa’s decision to launch its agent-enabled commerce platform in Asia Pacific isn’t random. The region leads the world in mobile payment adoption and digital-first consumer behavior, making it the ideal testing ground for AI-mediated transactions.
The company describes the rollout as a fundamental redesign of payment architecture. Instead of systems optimized for human actions—typing, tapping, browsing—Visa is creating infrastructure built from the ground up for machine-speed transactions.
T.R. Ramachandran, Visa’s Asia Pacific product lead, said that “agentic commerce is transforming the very fabric of online transactions,” emphasizing that a unified ecosystem is required to support AI-driven shopping.
AI adoption by consumers is already driving this shift. Visa cites Adobe insights showing that 85% of consumers who shop using AI report better experiences. But that satisfaction hides a key issue: merchants currently have no standard way of verifying whether an AI making a purchase is authorized or malicious.
How Visa’s Agentic Commerce System Works
Visa Intelligent Commerce is powered by a suite of APIs covering tokenization, authentication, transaction instructions, and signal verification. Together, these tools create a new protocol layer designed specifically for AI commerce.
At the heart of the system is the Trusted Agent Protocol, a cryptographic identity layer that confirms whether an AI agent has legitimate shopper authorization. This solves a fundamental flaw in existing security systems. Traditional fraud detection flags unusual human behavior—but AI agents behave in ways that appear suspicious by default: instant checkouts, parallel shopping across platforms, and algorithmic decision-making.
Visa’s infrastructure ensures merchants can still link each AI-driven transaction back to the real consumer. This visibility protects customer relationships, loyalty data, and personalisation strategies that businesses rely on.
A notable design choice is that the framework is open and low-code, enabling merchants, payment processors, and AI platforms across the region to integrate without steep technical overhead.
A Growing Ecosystem Around AI Payments
Visa’s partnerships with Stripe, Tencent, Microsoft, Perplexity, LG Uplus, and Ant International highlight how expansive this ecosystem will become. These aren’t simple vendor relationships—they’re nodes in a multi-platform network where AI agents navigate research, payment authorization, and commerce execution seamlessly.
Imagine a user telling a voice assistant to plan a trip. The AI might research through Perplexity, book accommodations with a hotel’s digital system using Visa credentials, and finalize flights through Stripe—all while security and authorization standards remain consistent in the background.
This interoperability is necessary as regulators across Asia Pacific begin shaping rules around autonomous agents, consumer protections, and cross-border AI commerce. Visa’s early pilot positions it to influence emerging standards.
What This Means for Retail and Payment Strategy
For merchants, the shift to AI-mediated transactions changes core assumptions about digital commerce. Traditional strategies—optimizing for clicks, visual appeal, and human decision-making—will matter less as AI agents make choices based on algorithms rather than emotion.
Businesses that integrate with AI commerce early will have significant advantages: the ability to understand agent-driven purchasing patterns, protect customer identity behind AI intermediation, and refine fraud detection tailored to machine workflows.
Those who delay risk falling behind as consumers increasingly shop through automated assistants.
Visa offered a preview of the platform at the Singapore FinTech Festival, giving businesses their first look at what implementation will require. With access to Visa’s 4.8 billion credentials across millions of merchants, the Asia Pacific pilot is likely the blueprint for the global standard.
Preparing for the Road Ahead
Fourteen months may sound generous, but preparing for agent-driven commerce requires deep changes—updating payment systems, rethinking user experience design for AI intermediaries, and building fraud models that distinguish approved AI agents from sophisticated bots.
Visa’s Intelligent Commerce initiative doesn’t merely update existing payment flows—it lays the groundwork for an entirely new model of digital transactions. As Asia Pacific becomes the testing ground, the insights gained will ripple across global commerce.
Source: https://www.artificialintelligence-news.com/news/visa-ai-commerce-intelligent-commerce-2026/
