en.Wedoany.com Reported - Credit card provider Visa has announced the completion of the first real-world transactions in AI-assisted commerce in Europe. AI agents made purchases on behalf of cardholders at participating merchants' websites, with transactions conducted directly on the merchant sites rather than in closed test environments.
More than 30 financial institutions and card issuers participated in the testing, including Swiss companies Cornèrcard, Swisscard, and Viseca. Under the project framework, AI agents searched merchant websites, selected products, and completed purchases based on parameters set by users. Visa emphasized that each payment was authorized by the consumer, who retained control over the transaction.
These tests were based on the Visa Intelligent Commerce platform launched by Visa in 2025. The solution connects financial institutions, merchants, and AI systems via the Visa network to enable secure, authenticated payments that comply with European regulatory requirements.
Participating merchants included Cleverbridge, Lastminute.com, Frasers, and Brickdepot, which tested transactions in the travel and retail sectors. Visa described this as the next phase of its Visa Agentic Ready program, which aims to integrate infrastructure, standards, and partners to advance AI-assisted commerce.
Santosh Ritter, Visa's Country Manager for Switzerland and Liechtenstein, stated in the announcement: "We are now seeing AI agents able to shop directly at real merchants on behalf of humans. The next step will be scaling this up." He also highlighted the participation of several Swiss partners in the project.
Infrastructure for AI-assisted commerce
Merchant participation is based on the Trusted Agent Protocol (TAP) and the Agent Directory. Visa stated that these features can identify verified AI agents across platforms and distinguish between trusted and unverified access. Merchants can control how these agents access their websites, display products, and complete transactions.
The announcement noted that TAP is built on existing e-commerce protocols, requiring no new infrastructure on the merchant side. Its deployment is supported by infrastructure providers such as Cloudflare and Akamai.
On the issuer side, Visa adopted Visa Payment Passkeys. This authentication method uses biometrics to confirm user identity. According to the announcement, transactions conducted under the Visa Agentic Ready program were secured using this technology to meet European strong customer authentication requirements.
