Visa and Mastercard To Integrate With AI Agents

Payment card giants Visa and Mastercard have announced plans to integrate with AI “agents,” enabling them to make purchases on users’ behalf by accessing their credit card information. According to Visa, the agents would verify purchases with users at first, but would gain more autonomy over time.

AI agents, or “personal assistants,” are advanced versions of popular chatbot large language models (LLMs). They are designed to simplify users’ lives by taking over critical functions across work and day-to-day life. So far, progress on these AI agents has been slow, with little to show for it.

However, the payment card companies seem optimistic about the future. In an April 30th release, Visa announced its “Visa Intelligent Commerce,” which will allow AI agent developers to connect with Visa’s tools. “Soon people will have AI agents browse, select, purchase and manage on their behalf,” said Visa’s Chief Product and Strategy Officer Jack Forestell. “These agents will need to be trusted with payments, not only by users, but by banks and sellers as well.”

The company will collaborate with leading companies in the AI and tech sectors like Anthropic, IBM, Microsoft, OpenAI, Perplexity, and more.

As for Mastercard, the company announced its “Mastercard Agent Pay” the previous day, which offers a similar service. Mastercard has announced partnerships with Microsoft and IBM.

In its press release, the company offered the example of someone planning an upcoming birthday party. “She can chat with an AI agent to proactively curate a selection of outfits and accessories from local boutiques and online retailers based on her style […] Based on her preferences and feedback, the intelligent agent can make the purchase, and also recommend the best way to pay.”

These tools don’t mean that ChatGPT, for instance, will make purchases in the immediate future, but they allow developers to create new models with the payment card integrations in mind. Though the promise of AI shopping assistants isn’t new, it has yet to consolidate into a reliable model.

Last month, the founder of the “Nate” app – promoted as an AI-powered “universal shopping cart” – was charged with fraud by the US Department of Justice. The investigation showed that its “AI” shopping assistants were really human workers in the Philippines and Romania.