en.Wedoany.com Reported - Visa has announced the implementation of real commercial transactions in Europe executed by AI agents on behalf of cardholders, marking a new phase of agent commerce in digital payments. At the Visa Payments Forum in Paris, the company demonstrated how AI agents can directly complete purchases with independent merchants based on user instructions, moving beyond controlled environment tests or simulated point-of-sale scenarios. The forum brought together 2,000 industry experts, with agent commerce emerging as a key topic.
During actual transactions, AI agents can browse products, select items, and execute purchases, all within pre-set parameters defined by consumers. Visa connects banks, merchants, and AI systems through its network, ensuring secure and authenticated transactions in agent commerce while complying with European regulatory requirements. This capability is supported by the Visa Intelligent Commerce product portfolio, which focuses on AI-driven secure shopping. Consumers explicitly authorize transactions, while AI agents operate based on user-preset preferences, rules, and parameters.
Visa is collaborating with over 30 issuers in Europe to advance agent commerce in real-world scenarios. Participating merchants include lastminute.com, Frasers, Cleverbridge, and BrickDepot, with transactions spanning travel, retail, and e-commerce sectors. This milestone represents the next phase of Visa's global Agentic Ready program in Europe, which aims to develop the infrastructure, standards, and partnerships required for agent commerce.
Mathieu Altwegg, Head of Products and Solutions at Visa Europe, stated that AI agents can now make direct purchases from independent merchants on behalf of users. The next step is to scale this capability by integrating the entire ecosystem, including standards, infrastructure, partners, and key stakeholders, with trust as the system's foundation. He noted that Visa adopted a similar approach when promoting contactless payments and believes this new form of commerce will develop in the same way.
Alessandro Petazzi, CEO of lastminute.com, pointed out that the company's role is to manage the entire travel experience, from inspiring users to travel, to facilitating everything from flights and accommodations to payments and real-time changes. He stated that as artificial intelligence transforms how people search for and plan travel, reliable identity authentication and trust-building efforts enable such initiatives to be tested seriously and responsibly. While still in early stages, such testing needs to begin now.
Merchant participation in agent commerce is facilitated through the Visa Trusted Agent Protocol and Agent Directory. These solutions enable merchants to securely identify and collaborate with verified AI agents across platforms and environments, providing a consistent way to confirm AI agent identities and helping merchants distinguish trusted interactions from unverified traffic. Merchants retain control over how AI agents access their websites, display products, and execute transactions. These signals can be integrated into existing risk management, rule definition, and user experience design frameworks without requiring new infrastructure. The Trusted Agent Protocol is designed to work alongside existing and emerging digital commerce protocols, allowing merchants to implement it in a way that suits their preferred platforms and existing infrastructure.
Implementation is supported by service providers Cloudflare and Akamai, with these capabilities integrated into large-scale systems that support online stores and merchant websites. Issuers participate through the Visa Payment Passkeys solution, providing a reliable and compliant identity authentication method for transactions initiated by AI agents. Each transaction is securely authorized and directly linked to a verified user and their explicit instructions. Consumers always maintain full control over when and how payments are executed. All transactions conducted under the Agentic Ready program are protected by Visa Payment Passkeys, providing additional security and trust for issuers and merchants.
Visa Payment Passkeys help meet European Strong Customer Authentication requirements. By ensuring cardholder identity authentication and verifying reliable identification of AI agents, Visa enables secure execution of AI agent-initiated transactions while maintaining transparency and control for users. By enabling trusted interactions between AI agents, online stores, and issuing banks, Visa aims to address key barriers to widespread adoption of agent commerce. Consumers retain control over transactions, merchants can reliably identify AI agents, and issuers have transparency and control over the payment process.
