Visa Unveils AI-driven Commerce Revolution, Taps Into 4.8bn Credentials, 150m Merchants

Visa has announced a bold new era for commerce, unveiling a suite of AI-powered innovations and strategic partnerships aimed at transforming how consumers and businesses engage in digital payments globally.

With over 4.8 billion Visa credentials in use and acceptance at 150 million merchant locations worldwide, the payment giant is positioning itself at the forefront of AI-driven commerce innovation.

This is even as Visa has announced a bold new era for commerce, unveiling a suite of AI-powered innovations and strategic partnerships aimed at transforming how consumers and businesses engage in digital payments globally.

At the Visa Global Product Drop, the global payment giant introduced Visa Intelligent Commerce, a landmark initiative that opens its powerful network to AI developers and platforms, enabling seamless integration of payments into emerging AI-driven commerce experiences.

This move is set to reshape how people shop, pay, and get paid in the age of artificial intelligence.

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Visa CEO, Ryan McInerney, in a press statement made available to LEADERSHIP, said as new ways to pay emerge, they need to run on a network that is always on – safe, secure, scalable and relentlessly innovating.

“We are taking the power of our network and our decades-long expertise to bring new products and solutions that will transform commerce and bring trust and security to AI-enabled payments,” McInerney averred.

Visa’s strategy is anchored in leveraging AI not only for fraud protection, as it has for years, but now also for consumer empowerment—enabling AI agents to browse, purchase, and manage transactions on users’ behalf. These agents will use Visa credentials at over 150 million merchant locations worldwide.

To drive this evolution, Visa is collaborating with leading AI and tech companies including Anthropic, IBM, Microsoft, Mistral AI, OpenAI, Perplexity, Stripe, and Samsung, ensuring AI commerce gains the trust and reach needed for global adoption.

Among the key announcements were that Visa is deepening its work with crypto by expanding stablecoin-linked card capabilities. In collaboration with Stripe’s Bridge, Visa will enable fintech developers to launch stablecoin-linked cards via a single API and Visa’s next-gen card, which toggles between payment options like debit, credit, and buy-now-pay-later, is expanding. A new partnership with Klarna will bring the Flex Credential to the U.S., with a European launch for a debit-to-BNPL use case.

A new universal wallet connector allowing users to pay at any Visa-accepting merchant globally. The service enters beta in select markets across Asia, Europe and Latin America and targeting micro-sellers, this tool turns any NFC smartphone into a payment acceptance device, allowing direct payments to Visa debit cards. The service will pilot in Latin America and Asia from July.

Visa’s chief product and strategy officer, Jack Forestell, described the AI-driven transformation as a “magic moment” in commerce. “AI agents will soon streamline daily tasks from ordering groceries to booking tickets, creating a personalised and more delightful shopping experience,” he added.

With more than 4.8 billion Visa credentials in use globally, the company is positioning itself as the essential infrastructure provider for the next generation of AI commerce.