Visa used its Payments Forum 2026 stage to outline a broad push into AI-driven commerce and stablecoin settlement, unveiling new tools designed to let artificial agents transact securely and let banks and merchants move digital money faster and with more assurance.
What Visa announced
- Visa Intelligent Commerce: A platform to enable “agentic” commerce—where AI agents act on behalf of users to find, negotiate and pay for goods and services. The system provides controls, connectivity and transaction tooling so agents can complete trusted payments.
- OpenAI partnership: Visa said it has formed a strategic collaboration with OpenAI to enable secure Visa payments inside agentic experiences built on OpenAI’s platforms.
- Agent Score with New Generation and an Agentic Directory: Tools to help merchants evaluate whether an AI agent can navigate and complete tasks on their sites, and a registry to help merchants and verified agents identify trusted counterparties.
- Token upgrades and a token assurance signal: Visa will enrich payment tokens with more contextual data (transaction type, token use, payment origin) and introduce a “token assurance” signal that combines provisioning and behavioral history to give issuers better trust signals—intended to reduce false declines and friction for consumers.
- Tokenized deposits tech layer: A new infrastructure layer to let banks convert traditional deposits into programmable digital money, matching stablecoin speed while keeping funds on balance sheets.
- Stablecoin settlement expansion: Visa said it has moved billions in stablecoins over VisaNet and that its stablecoin settlement run rate reached about $7 billion as of March 2026. Issuing banks already settle on-chain with Visa seven days a week; Visa is working to extend seven-day settlement to acquirers to increase settlement frequency and flexibility.
- Developer and Crypto Labs work: Demos included a proof-of-concept where AI agents can pay for digital services via a terminal. Visa framed this as part of a push to support developers building AI-led creation and transaction flows. The firm also highlighted modular, cloud-native services (Pismo, Unified Checkout, Visa Intelligent Authorization) to help clients modernize systems.
- Card and program growth: Visa said more than 160 stablecoin-linked card programs are live or in development worldwide.
Why it matters
Visa is addressing both ends of an evolving commerce stack: AI is changing how consumers interact with merchants on the front end, while stablecoins and tokenization are altering the back-end rails. By adding richer token metadata and a token-assurance signal, Visa aims to give issuers and merchants stronger identity and permission signals across devices and channels—reducing friction as AI agents start doing more buying on users’ behalf. The tokenized deposit layer is explicitly pitched to let banks keep deposits on their balance sheets while matching the speed and programmability of stablecoins.
A company perspective
“AI is transforming the front end of commerce,” Visa Chief Product and Strategy Officer Jack Forestell said, “and stablecoins are changing the back end of payments. We want to support these systems with security, reliability, and global scale.” He added that many innovations don’t scale unless they earn trust, security and reach—areas Visa intends to provide.
Takeaway
Visa’s announcements stitch together AI, token data, and blockchain settlement into a unified vision for agent-driven, programmable commerce. For crypto-native players, the moves signal broader mainstream infrastructure support for stablecoin flows and on-chain settlement—while for merchants and issuers they promise more signals and tools to reduce risk and rejected transactions as AI agents begin transacting at scale.
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