Visa and OpenAI Partner to Bring AI-Powered Commerce Into the Mainstream

Visa and OpenAI are joining forces to build the infrastructure for what both companies describe as the next evolution of digital commerce, enabling AI agents to not only recommend products but also complete purchases on behalf of users through secure, user-controlled payment systems.

The partnership, announced at the Visa Payments Forum in San Francisco, aims to accelerate the rise of what Visa calls “agentic commerce,” a model where AI assistants can research, compare, and purchase products while operating within spending limits and permissions set by consumers.

The collaboration will integrate Visa’s global payments infrastructure directly into OpenAI experiences, allowing AI-powered assistants to initiate and manage transactions while leveraging Visa’s tokenization, authorization, identity verification, and fraud monitoring capabilities. [

AI Moves Beyond Recommendations to Transactions

The announcement marks a significant step in the evolution of artificial intelligence from a tool that provides information to one capable of taking real-world actions.

As AI assistants increasingly become part of everyday consumer interactions, Visa believes commerce is entering a new era where digital agents can act on behalf of users across online platforms and merchant ecosystems.

According to Visa, consumers are already using AI to discover products, compare options, and make purchasing decisions. The next phase is enabling these assistants to complete transactions while maintaining security and consumer control.

“AI will transform commerce more profoundly than the internet or mobile technology ever did,” Visa stated, emphasizing that trusted and secure transaction infrastructure will be critical as AI agents become active participants in the economy.

Building the Infrastructure for Agentic Payments

Under the partnership, transactions will be powered by tokenized Visa credentials that replace sensitive payment data with secure digital tokens tied to specific agents and approved use cases. The system will also include real-time authorization and continuous fraud monitoring.

Consumers will remain in control through customizable guardrails, including spending limits, merchant category restrictions, approval requirements, and other permissions designed to ensure AI agents operate only within authorized parameters.

The infrastructure builds on the same security framework Visa currently uses across more than 300 billion annual transactions processed on its global network.

Beyond Shopping: Enterprise and B2B Opportunities

While consumer commerce is a primary focus, the partnership extends into enterprise applications as well.

Visa and OpenAI said they plan to explore embedding payment capabilities and trusted agent identity features into Codex, OpenAI’s AI coding agent, as well as broader automated business workflows. Potential use cases include procurement, invoicing, reconciliation, and payment execution across business environments.

The companies also highlighted future opportunities around cardholder benefits, premium consumer experiences, small-business financial products, and additional commerce services built on OpenAI’s expanding AI ecosystem.

A New Battleground for Payments

The announcement underscores a growing convergence between artificial intelligence and financial infrastructure, as major payment networks race to secure a role in the emerging AI-driven economy.

For merchants, the integration could create a new channel through which consumers interact and transact. For financial institutions, it offers a framework for extending existing security and risk-management controls into AI-powered payment environments.

As competition intensifies around agentic AI, the Visa-OpenAI collaboration signals that the next battle may not be over who builds the smartest AI assistant, but who provides the trusted infrastructure that allows those assistants to safely handle money.

With AI rapidly evolving from conversational interface to transaction layer, Visa is making a bet that the future of commerce will increasingly be conducted by digital agents acting on behalf of consumers, businesses, and developers alike.