Visa, a global leader in digital payments, today announced the launch of Visa Agentic Ready, a new global programme, designed to support the payments ecosystem as it prepares for a new era of agentic commerce. Launching first in Europe, including the UK, this builds on Visa Intelligent Commerce – Visa’s strategic framework for enabling trusted, AI-driven commerce experiences at scale.
In its first phase, Visa Agentic Ready focuses on issuer readiness, providing issuing partners with a structured pathway to test and validate agent-initiated transactions, working in close partnership with Visa and selected merchants to explore how these transactions could operate securely, at scale, in controlled production environments.
Through the programme, participating issuers will gain firsthand experience of how agentic commerce platforms can securely initiate and complete transactions on behalf of consumers, while maintaining the trust, control and protections that underpin the Visa network.
“As AI agents increasingly shape how people shop and buy, payments need to keep up,” said Mathieu Altwegg, Head of Product & Solutions, Visa Europe. “Visa Agentic Ready will initially help European issuers prepare for secure, scalable agent‑initiated payments, built on infrastructure people already trust.”
Bespoke Design for Europe, Built on Existing Foundations
While Visa Agentic Ready is a global programme, it is launching first in Europe, including the UK, as part of a phased rollout. Europe offers a strong environment for testing and collaboration, with high adoption of tokenisation, passkeys and advanced authentication – capabilities that are also well established across Visa’s global network.
This initial phase focuses on testing how agent-initiated payments work in real issuer environments, helping ensure they remain secure, reliable and easy to run at scale.
Visa Agentic Ready is powered by Visa’s trust layer, bringing together tokens, identity, risk and controls to examine how trusted agent‑initiated payments could be enabled across channels and use cases. The work is helping to inform how issuers can extend familiar protections into future AI‑driven experiences, using tokenisation and biometric authentication so that agent‑initiated payments are clearly tied to a real person, with consent and control at key moments.
From Readiness to Real‑World Scale
Bringing agentic commerce to life at scale requires coordination across the payments ecosystem, and Visa is excited to have already enrolled a number of its clients into the Agentic Ready programme.
Through controlled, production-grade testing with selected merchants, the programme enables participants to validate how agent-initiated payments operate in real world environments, helping build confidence as these new experiences move from concept to reality.
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This work supports Visa’s broader vision for intelligent, programmable commerce, where trusted credentials and network capabilities enable payments to respond securely and flexibly to consumer intent, context and controls. As more of the shopping journey becomes automated, this helps ensure agents can act seamlessly on a consumer’s behalf – while keeping people firmly in control.
Early issuing partners engaging in the Visa Agentic Ready programme include Alpha Bank, Banca Transilvania, Bank Leumi, Bank of Cyprus, Bank of Valletta, Barclays, CAL, Commerzbank, Cornèrcard, DZ Bank, Erste Bank Oesterreich as part of Erste Group, Eurobank Limited, HSBC UK, MAX, Millennium BCP, Nationwide Building Society, Nexi Group, Piraeus Bank, Raiffeisen Bank International, Revolut, Banco Santander with additional partners expected to join as the programme expands.
Agentic Ready builds on traction with partners in North America, Asia Pacific, the Middle East and Latin America – to make AI commerce a reality for people and businesses across the globe.
