Visa launches ‘Agentic Ready’ AI programme to help firms prepare for agentic commerce

Visa says phase one of the programme rollout “focuses on issuer readiness, providing issuing partners with a structured pathway to test and validate agent-initiated transactions”.

Visa has unveiled a new programme called Visa Agentic Ready, which the company says is designed “to support the payments ecosystem as it prepares for a new era of agentic commerce”.

Agentic commerce is when AI agents are autonomously able to discover, negotiate, and complete purchases on behalf of a user.

Visa Agentic Ready will launch first in Europe, including the UK, under an initial phase that “focuses on issuer readiness, providing issuing partners with a structured pathway to test and validate agent-initiated transactions”, Visa confirms.

These issuing partners, including Commerzbank, Revolut, HSBC UK, Nexi Group, DZ Bank, Bank Leumi, Nationwide, and Barclays, will work “in close partnership with Visa and selected merchants to explore how these transactions could operate securely, at scale, in controlled production environments”.

Visa says participants will gain “first-hand experience of how agentic commerce platforms can securely initiate and complete transactions on behalf of consumers, while maintaining the trust, control, and protections that underpin the Visa network”.