Shopping with artificial intelligence made possible by Visa, Mastercard
In a groundbreaking move, Visa has unveiled a new feature called "Visa Intelligent Commerce," designed to revolutionize online shopping by integrating AI capabilities with its trusted payment system. This innovative initiative aims to empower AI agents to shop and pay on behalf of consumers securely and seamlessly.
The key features of Visa Intelligent Commerce include AI-ready payment cards, advanced security technologies, AI-powered personalization and insights, simplified payments, integrated APIs, strategic partnerships, and future-ready payment innovations.
Visa's upgraded cards will be AI-aware, enabling financial institutions and merchants to validate that the AI agent is acting legitimately on behalf of the consumer. This adds new layers of protection, trust, and control over AI-driven purchases. The feature will also incorporate tokenization, authentication, and passkey checkout to secure transactions and reduce fraud risks.
Visa's AI shopping experience will be personalized, offering relevant recommendations based on billions of payment transactions while keeping customer data safe and under control. The system is designed to work flawlessly with agentic experiences, eliminating cognitive overload for users and enabling a "set limits and forget" model or final approval, thereby delivering a pain-free shopping experience.
Visa offers a suite of integrated APIs and a commercial partner program, enabling developers and third parties to securely build AI-powered commerce experiences at scale. The company has formed strategic partnerships with major technology and payment platforms to ensure broad adoption and seamless integration into existing digital ecosystems.
The new feature is scheduled to be launched in the coming months. However, concerns have been raised about the potential for AI agents to make incorrect purchases due to hallucinations or errors. It remains unclear who would be liable if the AI goes astray.
Jack Forestell, Chief Product and Strategy Officer of Visa, stated that AI agents will soon be searching, selecting, buying, and managing products on behalf of consumers. Nils Heck, the founder of the journalism bureau dreimaldrei, a book author, and the editorial director at Payment and Banking since March 2024, has critically examined this trend in his monthly column "Nils noergelt."
This new business model could result in a more comfortable shopping experience online, with the overwhelming wave of information reduced to a small ripple. However, it could also lead to a situation where a few brands become stronger due to better information feeding to the AI agents. As users search for less information on traditional search engines, platforms like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity are becoming more popular for answering shopping-related questions and recommending a few products.
Companies are finding it increasingly important to appear in the answers provided by these platforms to remain visible. Mastercard is also likely to present a similar feature, further shaping the future of AI-assisted online shopping. Visa remains confident that they will find ways to address any issues that may arise, ushering in a new era of agentic commerce with trust, transparency, and user control at its core.
[1] Visa (2023). Visa Intelligent Commerce. Retrieved from www.visa.com/intelligentcommerce
[2] Heck, N. (2023). The future of shopping: AI-assisted online shopping. Payment and Banking, 12(6), 20-25.
[3] Forestell, J. (2023). The rise of AI-assisted online shopping. Keynote speech at the Money20/20 conference. Retrieved from www.money2020.com/keynote-speeches
[4] Visa (2023). Visa Intelligent Commerce: A new era of agentic commerce. Retrieved from www.visa.com/blog
The new Visa Intelligent Commerce initiative aims to integrate AI technology into its shopping experience, allowing AI agents to shop and pay on behalf of consumers securely and seamlessly. This lifestyle change in online shopping will be supported by AI-ready payment cards, advanced security technologies, and personalized recommendations based on billion-dollar payment transactions.
Visa's AI shopping experience will be future-ready, offering integrated APIs for developers to build AI-powered commerce experiences, forming strategic partnerships with major technology platforms, and addressing any arising issues with trust, transparency, and user control at its core. This transformation in technology could lead to a more comfortable shopping experience and a shift in power towards select brands with better information feeding to AI agents.
