Visa opens door wide to OpenAI

Visa is collaborating with OpenAI to support AI-driven commerce, allowing AI agents to search for products, compare options and complete transactions on behalf of consumers. The effort highlights how payment companies are preparing for a future in which AI tools play a more active role in shopping, checkout and digital payments.

Visa said transactions will operate within clearly defined user permissions, policies and controls, such as spending limits, merchant categories, or required approvals. Transactions also will use tokenized Visa credentials and real-time authorization and fraud monitoring.

"AI will transform commerce more profoundly than the internet or mobile technology ever did," said Jack Forestell, chief product and strategy officer at Visa. "As AI agents become active participants in the economy, Visa's focus is to ensure transactions are trusted, secure and seamless. That's the infrastructure we're building with partners like OpenAI."

"Commerce is going to happen in many more places and in many more ways than it does today, and agents will plan an increasingly important role in helping people complete tasks that involve money – from purchases and payments to more complex transactions," said Marco Mahrus, head of partnerships and commerce at OpenAI.

Mahrus went on to say that by "integrating with Visa Intelligent Commerce, we're building the infrastructure for secure, transparent, and user-controlled agentic transactions, helping people do more with AI agents while maintaining confidence that payments are being handled safely and securely."

Will consumers buy into it?

It may, however, take some convincing to get consumers to transition from simply agentic shopping to payments. A recent report by PYMNTS in collaboration with Worldpay, Agents of change: how agentic AI is redefining commerce, found that just 45 percent of consumers polled are comfortable allowing AI agents to complete purchases on their behalf; 95 percent express at least concerns about agentic commerce.

Common concerns include the risk of fraud from rogue agents, lack of data transparency and potential difficulties reversing unauthorized or unwanted purchases. Half of U.S. consumers said their trust in agentic commerce would increase if they knew clearly established fraud protections were in place.

Consumer worries about agentic commerce vary by region. For example, individuals in China and the UK are most worried about incorrect purchase decisions, while U.S. consumers, as well as those in Australia and France, are most worried about identity theft.

"These fears are compounded by broader doubts about AI's reliability," the report noted. "Past experiences with AI have shaken consumers' trust." Nearly all internet users are aware of the tendency AI has to hallucinate (that is, present false information as accurate) and 86 percent said they have personally encountered the problem.

What about merchants?

Merchants have concerns as well. Roughly two-thirds (65 percent) of those polled reported being aware of AI-driven frauds targeting them or their customers in the past year. Nearly all of those polled (99 percent) expressed at least some concerns about AI-related fraud. Forty-six percent said they are very concerned. For example, the report stated, malicious AI agents could mimic consumers or exploit weak defenses.

Merchants also have concerns about liability when AI agents make errors, such as incorrect purchases, according to the PYMNTS-Worldpay report. The report noted that unresolved questions involving fraud liability, chargebacks and transaction disputes may slow adoption until clearer industry frameworks emerge.

The existence of differing privacy regulations in different countries could also present problems. "Experts note that most firms seem unprepared to navigate their disparate policies," the report stated.

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