Visa launches Trusted Agent Protocol for AI commerce

Editorial

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Amidst a 4,700% surge in AI-driven traffic to US retail sites, Visa says its Trusted Agent Protocol aims to address the unique challenges facing agent-driven commerce, ushering in a new era where AI can search, compare and pay on behalf of consumers, while ensuring trust between merchants and AI agents.

Developed with Cloudfare, the protocol enables approved agents to securely pass critical information to merchants. This provides a framework for recognising trusted agents with commerce intent and distinguishes them from malicious automation and rogue bots.

Visa says it has received “insightful feedback” from other early partners including Adyen, Ant International, Checkout.com, Coinbase, CyberSource, Elavon, Fiserv, Microsoft, Nuvei, Shopify, Stripe and Worldpay.

With agentic commerce widely predicted to soon become big business, Stripe has been working with OpenAI on its own Agentic Commerce Protocol while Google has lined up more than 60 partners – including Adyen, Coinbase, Mastercard and PayPal – behind its Agent Payments Protocol.

The Visa protocol’s initial specifications apply to the Visa network “in this phase,” but the company says it is working to ensure it will complement the other protocols.

“We believe the entire payments ecosystem has a responsibility to ensure sellers can trust AI agents as much as they trust their best customers and networks,” says Jack Forestell, chief product and strategy officer, Visa.

“For the past year, we’ve worked closely with sellers, issuers and partners to make sure agent-initiated transactions are as seamless and secure as any payment today. Our new agent protocol is focused on creating no-code functionality for merchants to securely identify agents with an intent to buy and provide a better payments and personalized experience for its known users.”