Wirex is partnering with Visa to test a future where AI agents can pay for things on behalf of users — and stablecoins will be the rails.
The crypto-friendly payments firm has joined Visa’s new Agentic Ready programme as an issuer, taking part in trials designed to let software agents initiate and complete payments while preserving security, transparency and consumer controls. Wirex says the “agentic economy” is growing rapidly—about 44% annually, per the company—and argues that stablecoins are well-suited to power always-on payment flows that traditional banking rails can’t easily support.
What Wirex and Visa will test
- Real-world experiments with AI-driven agents executing payments using stablecoins, in collaboration with Visa and other ecosystem participants.
- Key goals: ensure transactions remain secure and reliable, and that users retain visibility and consent over agent actions.
- Early use cases under review include SaaS subscription payments, marketing budget management, and business procurement workflows where agents can act without needing manual sign-off at every step.
Context: Visa’s wider blockchain push
This initiative builds on Visa’s expanding work in blockchain and stablecoin payments. Recent projects include a proof-of-concept with Brale on the Canton Network testing settlement with Brale’s SBC stablecoin in a permissioned, privacy-enabled environment — aimed at institutional payments that require controlled transaction visibility. Visa has also supported settlement using Circle’s USDC on Ethereum and explored stablecoin-funded payments, tokenized-asset spending, and crypto rewards.
Wirex — already a principal member of Visa — says the new collaboration will extend its existing relationship with Visa and explore practical agent-driven payment flows such as travel bookings, subscription management and automated transaction execution. Wirex emphasized that users will keep control and oversight over how agent-initiated transactions occur.
Pavel Matveev, Wirex co-founder and CEO, framed the work as a step toward mainstreaming delegated payments: “Together with Visa, we want to introduce a trusted model for payments to lead this shift, delegating financial actions to software whilst operating within Visa’s global payment networks and Wirex’s decade-long track record of compliance.”
Broader market signals
Visa’s agentic programme arrives amid a flurry of crypto-linked product moves from the card giant and partners. Recent Visa-related launches include a card issued through Tether and Fasset to spend tokenized gold with rewards paid in Tether Gold, and a Visa-linked card from SBI Group in Japan offering Bitcoin, Ethereum and XRP rewards via SBI VC Trade.
Why it matters
If successful, these tests could accelerate practical, secure use of AI agents for automated payments across both consumer and enterprise use cases, while further anchoring stablecoins as a backbone for seamless, 24/7 digital transactions.
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