Agentic Commerce - Early days

TLDR

Agentic Commerce has been the buzzword for sometime now. All tech companies, payment providers, acquirers and banks are trying to build the early rules and foundations that will govern the inevitable - commerce done by AI agents.

The concept has been around for sometime now - Where an AI agent not just provides recommendations, but compares prices, filters, optimises for the choices and preferences, and then make a purchase. This can happen asynchronously, which means the AI Agent needs to have the authorisation to make financial decisions for the consumer.

Visa, where I work, and Google have each announced protocols that aim to establish the early rules of agent-led commerce. The core requirements remain familiar in payments: security, reliability and scalability — but the agent-commerce context adds new dimensions of trust, intent, and transparency. While adoption is still in its early stages, these initiatives mark a meaningful step into what may become a major shift in how commerce operates.

And this is quite big, and frankly, pretty cool.

What is Agentic Commerce?

Agentic commerce refers to AI agents acting on behalf of users to:

• Browse and compare products
• Make purchasing decisions
• Initiate and complete payments

These agents could be embedded in apps, browsers, or even smart devices. There may also be use cases beyond just “buying” — e.g., subscriptions, replenishment, procurement (B2B), service bookings — so the scope is broader than just product purchase.

But for this to work, merchants, acquirers, issuers and payment providers need to trust that the agent is legitimate — and that’s where Visa and Google are stepping in.

Obviously, all of this is very early stages, and things will evolve rapidly.

Visa’s Trusted Agent Protocol + Intelligent Commerce

Visa has introduced two key components which will be cornerstones of Agentic Commerce:

1. Trusted Agent Protocol

This is Visa’s open framework that lets merchants recognise and interact with trusted AI agents. It uses existing standards to:

• Authenticate agents
• Share user intent and payment data
• Enable secure agent-to-merchant communication

2. Visa Intelligent Commerce (VIC)

VIC is the engine that powers agentic transactions. It includes:

Visa’s ecosystem includes Agent Providers (apps that interact with users) and Agent Enablers (tech partners that manage secure API calls and token provisioning).

• Agent Providers: Direct-to-consumer applications that interface with cardholders and integrate directly with Visa. This could be standalone GenAI apps - like Chat GPT or Perplexity. But this could also be embedded into merchants directly like AI plugins. This is a whitespace, and is going to fill quickly.
• Agent Enablers (A similar function to what Token Requestor - Token Service Provider TR-TSPs do in the Token universe): Service providers that act as intermediaries between agent providers and Visa, managing API interactions and secure credential handling

This partnership was announced with several key acqruiers, PSPs and Microsoft .

Google’s Agent Payments Protocol (AP2)

Key Features of AP2:

• Mandates: Cryptographically signed digital contracts that prove a user gave an agent permission to act
• Verifiable Credentials: Used to authenticate agents and validate transactions
• Payment Rail Agnostic: Supports credit cards, bank transfers, stablecoins, and crypto rails
• Auditability: Every transaction has a traceable audit trail for accountability

Google announced this with over 60 partners which includes banks, fintechs, acquirers and other schemes like Mastercard and Amex, but interestingly Visa was not publicly listed in the initial partner announcement.

Conclusion

Both Visa and Google are solving the same problem: how to trust AI agents with money.

We should expect to see pilot roll-outs very soon, regulatory scrutiny around liability and disclosures, and early signs of potentially successful ecosystems emerging in the next 12 -18 months.

Agentic commerce is now turning from concept to reality. There would be several changes along the way, but the infrastructure to make it work is being built, and its being done with open standards, cross-industry collaboration, and a focus on trust and scalability.

Sources:

• Visa Introduces Trusted Agent Protocol: An Ecosystem-Led Framework for AI Commerce
• publisher_handle Getting Started - Trusted Agent Protocol
• publisher_handle Visa Intelligent Commerce for Agents
• Google Cloud Announcing Agent Payments Protocol (AP2) | Google Cloud Blog

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