Visa and OpenAI team up to enable AI agents to shop online

The dawn of agent trade

This cooperation marks a key step towards what experts call “agentic commerce”. Riverč is about a new e-commerce model where AI agents act as autonomous assistants that manage tasks and transactions for consumers and businesses. Instead of users actively searching for products, comparing prices and manually entering payment data, AI assistants will be able to take over the entire process, from discovering the product to making the payment itself. Within the new partnership, AI agents operating within OpenAI products will be able to initiate and complete transactions supported by Visa’s global network. This is part of Visa’s broader “Intelligent Commerce” initiative, which aims to integrate secure payment options into new digital environments. For OpenAI, this is a turning point in the evolution of their tools, which are transformed from informational to transactional platforms capable of performing economic tasks. Industry analysts predict that agency trade could affect trillions of dollars in global retail spending by 2030.

User safety as a priority

One of the key questions that arises is the security of such transactions. Visa emphasizes that protective measures will remain in place to keep users’ money safe. Users will have a number of control mechanisms at their disposal, such as setting spending limits, restricting purchases to certain categories of merchants, and requiring the approval of each individual transaction. To prevent exposure of sensitive card information, the system will use tokenized credentials. Just as Apple Pay does not share actual card information with the merchant, Visa will use digital tokens that replace the card number, significantly reducing the risk of misuse. Along with tokenization, transactions will be protected by Visa’s existing infrastructure, which includes real-time fraud monitoring and robust authorization processes. However, the new model also brings new challenges, such as the need to develop a framework for trust. In the industry, moreć the concept of “Know Your Agent” appears, which emphasizes the importance of a system for distinguishing legitimate AI agents from malicious bots.

“As AI agents become active participants in the economy, Visa’s focus is to ensure transactions are trusted, secure and seamless. That’s the infrastructure we’re building with partners like OpenAI,” explained Jack Forestell, chief product and strategy officer at Visa.

The competition does not sleep

Although this partnership is a significant step forward, it is only a part of it. wider picture. In the initial phase, cooperation is limited to Visa and OpenAI, excluding other AI companies such as Gemini and Claude, as well as other payment service providers. However, the competition is greater. works on similar solutions. MasterCard announced its own Agent Pay platform a year ago as the basis for future agent payments, and PayPal is actively exploring partnerships in this field. The development of open standards also plays a key role in this emerging ecosystem. Protocols such as the Agentic Commerce Protocol (ACP), jointly developed by OpenAI and Stripe, and the Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP), backed by Google and Shopify, aim to create a standardized way of communication between AI agents and merchants, which could accelerate the adoption of AI-driven commerce.

“By integrating with Visa Intelligent Commerce, we are building the infrastructure for secure, transparent and user-controlled agent transactions,” added Marco Mahrus, Head of Partnerships and Commerce at OpenAI.