Visa is stepping deeper into the race to enable agentic AI payments, unveiling a new platform designed to help businesses take part in AI-driven commerce.
On Wednesday, the company introduced Intelligent Commerce Connect, describing it as a network, protocol, and a token vault–agnostic “on-ramp” for both AI agent developers and merchants. The platform acts as a universal layer for AI-powered transactions, allowing autonomous agents to browse, select, and pay for goods on behalf of users.
Through a single integration with the Visa Acceptance Platform, the system provides secure payment initiation, tokenization, spending controls, and authentication.
As competition grows, crypto ecosystems like Ethereum, Tron, and Solana, along with fintech firms, have also been positioning themselves to support AI-driven payments.
Visa said Intelligent Commerce Connect works with both Visa and non-Visa cards and is compatible with major AI agent protocols. It also enables merchant catalogs to be discovered within AI platforms while handling tokenization, compliance, and transaction security—all through a single integration.
The platform is currently being tested with select partners, with a wider rollout expected later in 2026.
This isn’t Visa’s first move in the space. Earlier this year, it introduced an experimental tool called Visa CLI, which allows AI agents to execute same-day payments.
In a related development, AI fintech company Nevermined has integrated with the platform using Coinbase’s x402 protocol, enabling autonomous agents to purchase digital goods and services. Users can link their Visa cards and define spending limits, while agents operate within those boundaries and merchants receive payments through existing systems.
According to its creators, the x402 protocol provides an open standard for programmatic payment requests, and it has already processed $24 million in transactions over the past month.
