Visa launches whitepaper on Agentic AI and the next era of autonomous commerce at Global Fintech Fest 2025

10/08/2025

 

After breakthroughs of cards, e-commerce and m-commerce, the next leap in payments is here: Agentic AI. Set to redefine how customers shop, pay and manage money, the global market for Agentic AI in commerce is projected to reach $175 billion by 2030. A new whitepaper by Visa, a global leader in digital payments, titled ‘Automation to Autonomy: How Agentic AI is Revolutionizing Payments’, explores how the payments ecosystem partners can prepare for this AI-powered future.

Launched at Global Fintech Fest 2025, the white paper explores how AI agents anticipate needs, make decisions and execute transactions within guardrails of consent, security, and spending limits. Businesses are rapidly adopting the technology, with 75% of global retailers expecting AI agents to be critical for competitiveness by 2026. To meet this moment, it is imperative that issuers, acquirers, merchants work together to drive greater value through frictionless AI-powered transactions.

Consumers want intuitive payments, but trust and privacy are non-negotiable

As AI becomes embedded in consumers’ lives, they are increasingly relying on it to enhance shopping experiences – 47% expressing interest in utilizing AI-powered agents for commerce. With Agentic AI, payments become more intuitive and tailored. An AI-powered agent could plan a leisure trip by booking flights, updating itineraries, and handling disruptions in real time while optimizing payment choices like rewards and BNPL (Buy Now Pay Later), redeeming loyalty benefits, and delivering just-in-time offers.

However, trust remains at the heart of this hyper-personalized technology. For instance, AI-powered fraud management agents may transform banking operations by cutting duplicate alerts, reducing false positives, and automating routine verifications, enabling teams to focus on complex investigations. Together, these innovations deliver seamless experiences while safeguarding trust, safety and privacy.

Speaking on the transformative potential of AI in commerce, Sushmit Nath, Head of Visa Consulting & Analytics, India & South Asia said, “Agentic AI is more than a technological advancement, it is a revolution in how we engage with commerce. At Visa, we see this as an opportunity to empower consumers with greater choice and control, while helping businesses unlock new value. This also means we are building a future where trust, security and consumer empowerment are at the forefront, and we invite partners across the ecosystem to join us in co-creating a new era of commerce.“

Visa is helping build the rails for a safe and scalable AI commerce future

To bring the benefits of autonomous commerce to consumers, Visa is working on Visa Intelligent Commerce, a platform designed to power a secure future for AI-Driven transactions. As 79% of consumers express data-privacy concerns with AI-driven commerce, Visa Intelligent Commerce is a strategic framework that addresses them, ensuring that the ecosystem remains secure, transparent, and efficient.

By enabling AI agents to use tokenized credentials with issuer validation, Visa extends the proven benefits of tokenization to AI transactions. Backed by real-time decision making, AI-ready APIs, and network-level safeguards, including user-set rules, traceable and reversible transactions, and mandatory confirmations, Visa is building the backbone of secure, consent-driven agentic payments.

Collaboration and inclusion will be key to unlocking the potential of Agentic AI

Agentic AI is set to transform how banks, fintechs, merchants, and consumers interact, enabling intelligent, real-time transactions that deliver faster checkouts, reduce fraud and cart abandonment, and drive personalized experiences at scale. With Visa’s AI-ready infrastructure and APIs, partners can securely test, launch, and scale new propositions while deepening customer relationships and lowering operational costs.

Success in this new era hinges on trust, transparency, and inclusion, and Visa is building this future on robust security, clear user consent, working closely with the regulator and partners, laying the groundwork for an intelligent, secure, and inclusive era of commerce.

 

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