Visa: Agentic Commerce Set to Transform Global Payments in Biggest Shift in 20 Years
Visa has identified “agentic commerce” as the most significant opportunity in the payments industry in more than two decades, highlighting its potential to fundamentally reshape how financial transactions are executed and to expand the global digital economy.
According to Jack Forestell, the emergence of an “agent-powered web” could mark the most important evolution in payments since the early days of digital commerce. This model relies on AI-powered intelligent agents capable of executing purchases and payments on behalf of users, significantly improving efficiency and transaction flow.
Forestell explained that agentic commerce can reduce friction in digital payments,. Intelligent agents can optimize transaction routing and execution, increasing approval rates and driving higher transaction volumes across the ecosystem—for consumers, merchants, and financial institutions alike.
Driving Transaction Growth
The model is also expected to increase transaction density. Visa’s network has already seen faster growth in transaction volumes ، driven by subscription-based services and streaming platforms. Agentic commerce is set to accelerate this trend by breaking down purchases into smaller, more frequent transactions—potentially occurring within minutes or seconds rather than months.
Transforming B2B Payments
Forestell highlighted the strong potential in the B2B segment, which still relies heavily on manual and inefficient processes. Intelligent agents can streamline supplier onboarding, invoicing, reconciliation, and payment execution, significantly accelerating digital transformation in business payments.
He noted that every wave of innovation in payments has historically driven economic growth, adding that agentic commerce could expand global GDP by increasing transaction activity rather than merely redistributing market share.
New Solutions and Infrastructure
Visa، leveraging its global infrastructure and expertise in managing complex payment flows securely.
The company has already developed solutions such as “Visa Intelligent Commerce” and “Trusted Agent Protocol,” which provide a framework for building agent-driven commerce experiences on top of its network.
With connections to over 14,500 financial institutions and 175 million merchants worldwide, Visa offers global reach alongside advanced security capabilities. Its systems analyze hundreds of signals across nearly 300 billion transactions annually to assess risk, in addition to using technologies like tokenization to securely link payment credentials to specific agents.
Trust as a Core Pillar
Visa emphasized that trust will remain the foundation of this transformation, especially as autonomous software increasingly participates in commercial transactions. The company’s long-standing track record in building trust across consumers, merchants, and financial institutions positions it strongly for this next phase.
The company concluded that it is moving rapidly toward enabling the next generation of commerce—powered by intelligent agents—which will unlock new business models such as machine-to-machine payments and fully automated transactions.
