Visa has announced a major partnership with OpenAI, setting the stage for AI agents like ChatGPT to handle online shopping for us.
This isn't just about an AI recommending a product; it's about an AI that can actually complete the purchase. Imagine telling your AI assistant, "Find me the best deal on these running shoes and buy them." The AI would then navigate websites, fill out payment details, and finalize the transaction on your behalf, all within pre-approved spending limits. This shift from 'AI that recommends' to 'AI that pays' is often called agentic commerce, and it represents a significant change in how we interact with online retail.
So, why is this happening now? The foundation for this was built over several years. First, a secure and standardized checkout process was needed. This came in the form of EMVCo's Secure Remote Commerce (SRC), also known as 'Click to Pay.' It creates a consistent, tokenized payment experience that an AI agent can reliably use across different websites. Second, merchants needed a way to trust that the AI agent was legitimate and not a malicious bot. Visa's Trusted Agent Protocol (TAP), developed with partners like Cloudflare, provides this identity layer, cryptographically verifying that an AI agent is authorized to make a purchase for a specific user.
Competition is another major driver. Mastercard launched its own 'Agent Pay' service back in April 2025 and is already expanding it. This created pressure on Visa to offer a similar, if not better, solution to ensure its network remains the top choice for merchants and banks exploring AI-driven commerce. In this environment, supporting agent payments becomes less of a futuristic experiment and more of a fundamental requirement to stay relevant.
Finally, this move is a direct lesson learned from past attempts. In 2025, OpenAI tried launching an 'Instant Checkout' feature with partners like Stripe, but it was scaled back due to friction over fees and its limited scope. The key takeaway was that a siloed, one-off solution wasn't enough. A broad, network-level integration with a payments giant like Visa was the logical next step to achieve the scale and security needed for agentic commerce to truly take off.
- Glossary -
- Agentic Commerce: A form of e-commerce where an autonomous AI agent acts on a user's behalf to complete tasks, including browsing, price comparison, and purchasing.
- Trusted Agent Protocol (TAP): A security framework developed by Visa and its partners that allows merchants to cryptographically verify the identity and authorization of an AI agent, distinguishing it from fraudulent bots.
- Secure Remote Commerce (SRC): A set of specifications from EMVCo (a consortium of major card networks) that standardizes online checkout, often seen as 'Click to Pay.' It uses tokenization to secure payment data.