The world’s biggest payment giants — Visa, Mastercard, and PayPal — are diving headfirst into AI-powered shopping, introducing intelligent agents that can search, select, and make purchases on behalf of users.
On Wednesday, Visa unveiled its new platform, Intelligent Commerce, describing it as a system where AI agents can “find and buy” based on a consumer’s preset preferences. “Each consumer sets the limits, and Visa helps manage the rest,” said Jack Forestell, Visa’s chief product and strategy officer.
Visa is collaborating with leading AI companies, including Anthropic, OpenAI, Microsoft, IBM, Mistral AI, Stripe, and Samsung to build these personalized, secure, and seamless shopping experiences.
The announcement follows Mastercard’s Agent Pay launch on Tuesday, which integrates payments into generative AI-driven shopping assistants. These AI agents can recommend and buy products tailored to a user’s needs, such as birthday outfits based on venue ambience and weather, and suggest the best payment method like Mastercard’s One Credential. Mastercard is working with Microsoft, IBM, Braintree, and Checkout.com to expand the technology’s reach.
Meanwhile, PayPal also revealed its own AI shopping agent earlier this week, entering what’s quickly becoming a competitive field known as agentic commerce.
