Visa is introducing a brand new safety framework designed to unravel one of many thorniest issues rising in synthetic intelligence-powered commerce: how retailers can inform the distinction between official AI buying assistants and the malicious bots that plague their web sites.
The funds big unveiled its Trusted Agent Protocol on Tuesday, establishing what it describes as foundational infrastructure for "agentic commerce" — a time period for the quickly rising follow of customers delegating buying duties to AI brokers that may search merchandise, evaluate costs, and full purchases autonomously.
The protocol permits retailers to cryptographically confirm that an AI agent shopping their website is permitted and reliable, somewhat than a bot designed to scrape pricing information, check stolen bank cards, or perform different fraudulent actions.
The launch comes as AI-driven site visitors to U.S. retail web sites has exploded by greater than 4,700% over the previous yr, based on information from Adobe cited by Visa. That dramatic surge has created an acute problem for retailers whose current bot detection methods — designed to dam automated site visitors — now threat by chance blocking official AI buyers together with dangerous actors.
"Retailers want extra instruments that present them with larger perception and transparency into agentic commerce actions to make sure they will take part safely," stated Rubail Birwadker, Visa's International Head of Development, in an unique interview with VentureBeat. "With out frequent requirements, potential dangers embrace ecosystem fragmentation and the proliferation of closed loop fashions."
The stakes are substantial. Whereas 85% of buyers who’ve used AI to buy report improved experiences, retailers face the prospect of both turning away official AI-powered clients or exposing themselves to classy bot assaults. Visa's personal information reveals the corporate prevented $40 billion in fraudulent exercise between October 2022 and September 2023, practically double the earlier yr, a lot of it involving AI-powered enumeration assaults the place bots systematically check mixtures of card numbers till discovering legitimate credentials.
Contained in the cryptographic handshake: How Visa verifies AI buying brokers
Visa's Trusted Agent Protocol operates by means of what Birwadker describes as a "cryptographic belief handshake" between retailers and accepted AI brokers. The system works in three steps:
First, AI brokers should be accepted and onboarded by means of Visa's Clever Commerce program, the place they bear vetting to satisfy belief and reliability requirements. Every accepted agent receives a novel digital signature key — primarily a cryptographic credential that proves its id.
When an accepted agent visits a service provider's web site, it creates a digital signature utilizing its key and transmits three classes of data: Agent Intent (indicating the agent is trusted and intends to retrieve product particulars or make a purchase order), Shopper Recognition (information displaying whether or not the underlying shopper has an current account with the service provider), and Fee Data (non-obligatory fee information to assist checkout).
Retailers or their infrastructure suppliers, comparable to content material supply networks, then validate these digital signatures in opposition to Visa's registry of accepted brokers. "Upon correct validation of those fields, the service provider can affirm the signature is a trusted agent," Birwadker defined.
Crucially, Visa designed the protocol to require minimal modifications to current service provider infrastructure. Constructed on the HTTP Message Signature customary and aligned with Internet Each Auth, the protocol works with current net infrastructure with out requiring retailers to overtake their checkout pages. "That is no-code performance," Birwadker emphasised, although retailers could have to combine with Visa's Developer Middle to entry the verification system.
The race for AI commerce requirements: Visa faces competitors from Google, OpenAI, and Stripe
Visa developed the protocol in collaboration with Cloudflare, the online infrastructure and safety firm that already offers bot administration companies to hundreds of thousands of internet sites. The partnership displays Visa's recognition that fixing bot verification requires cooperation throughout your entire net stack, not simply the funds layer.
"Trusted Agent Protocol dietary supplements conventional bot administration by offering retailers insights that allow agentic commerce," Birwadker stated. "Brokers are offering extra context they in any other case wouldn’t, together with what it intends to do, who the underlying shopper is, and fee info."
The protocol arrives as a number of know-how giants race to ascertain competing requirements for AI commerce. Google lately launched its Agent Protocol for Funds (AP2), whereas OpenAI and Stripe have mentioned their very own approaches to enabling AI brokers to make purchases. Microsoft, Shopify, Adyen, Ant Worldwide, Checkout.com, Cybersource, Elavon, Fiserv, Nuvei, and Worldpay offered suggestions throughout Trusted Agent Protocol's growth, based on Visa.
When requested how Visa's protocol pertains to these competing efforts, Birwadker struck a collaborative tone. "Each Google's AP2 and Visa's Trusted Agent Protocol are working towards the identical aim of constructing belief in agent-initiated funds," he stated. "We’re engaged with Google, OpenAI, and Stripe and want to create compatibility throughout the ecosystem."
Visa says it’s working with international requirements our bodies together with the Web Engineering Activity Drive (IETF), OpenID Basis, and EMVCo to make sure the protocol can ultimately turn out to be interoperable with different rising requirements. "Whereas these specs apply to the Visa community on this preliminary part, enabling brokers to securely and securely act on a shopper's behalf requires an open, ecosystem-wide strategy," Birwadker famous.
Who pays when AI brokers go rogue? Unanswered questions on legal responsibility and authorization
The protocol raises necessary questions on authorization and legal responsibility when AI brokers make purchases on behalf of customers. If an agent completes an unauthorized transaction — maybe misunderstanding a consumer's intent or exceeding its delegated authority — who bears duty?
Birwadker emphasised that the protocol helps retailers "leverage this info to allow experiences tied to current shopper relationships and safer checkout," however he didn’t present particular particulars about how disputes could be dealt with when brokers make unauthorized purchases. Visa's current fraud safety and chargeback methods would presumably apply, although the corporate has not but revealed detailed steerage on agent-initiated transaction disputes.
The protocol additionally locations Visa within the place of gatekeeper for the rising agentic commerce ecosystem. As a result of Visa determines which AI brokers get accepted for the Clever Commerce program and obtain cryptographic credentials, the corporate successfully controls which brokers retailers can simply belief. "Brokers are accepted and onboarded by means of the Visa Clever Commerce program, guaranteeing they meet our requirements for belief and reliability," Birwadker stated, although he didn’t element the particular standards brokers should meet or whether or not Visa prices charges for approval.
This gatekeeping function may show contentious, significantly if Visa's approval course of favors massive know-how corporations over startups, or if the corporate faces stress to dam brokers from opponents or politically controversial entities. Visa declined to offer particulars about what number of brokers it has accepted up to now or how lengthy the vetting course of sometimes takes.
Visa's authorized battles and the lengthy street to service provider adoption
The protocol launch comes at a posh second for Visa, which continues to navigate important authorized and regulatory challenges at the same time as its core enterprise stays strong. The corporate's newest earnings report for the third quarter of fiscal yr 2025 confirmed a ten% enhance in internet revenues to $9.2 billion, pushed by resilient shopper spending and powerful progress in cross-border transaction quantity. For the total fiscal yr ending September 30, 2024, Visa processed 289 billion transactions, with a complete funds quantity of $15.2 trillion.
Nonetheless, the corporate's authorized headwinds have intensified. In July 2025, a federal decide rejected a landmark $30 billion settlement that Visa and Mastercard had reached with retailers over long-disputed bank card swipe charges, sending the events again to the negotiating desk and lengthening the long-running authorized battle.
Concurrently, Visa stays beneath investigation by the Division of Justice over its guidelines for routing debit card transactions, with regulators scrutinizing whether or not the corporate's practices unlawfully restrict service provider alternative and stifle competitors. These home challenges are mirrored overseas, the place European regulators have continued their very own antitrust investigations into the payment constructions of each Visa and its main competitor, Mastercard.
Towards this backdrop of regulatory stress, Birwadker acknowledged that adoption of the Trusted Agent Protocol will take time. "As agentic commerce continues to rise, we acknowledge that shopper belief continues to be in its early phases," he stated. "That's why our focus by means of 2025 is on constructing foundational credibility and demonstrating real-world worth."
The protocol is offered instantly in Visa's Developer Middle and on GitHub, with agent onboarding already energetic and service provider integration assets accessible. However Birwadker declined to offer particular targets for what number of retailers would possibly undertake the protocol by the top of 2026. "Adoption is aligned with the momentum we're already seeing," he stated. "The launch of our protocol marks one other huge step — it's not only a technical milestone, however a sign that the business is starting to unify."
Business analysts say service provider adoption will possible rely on how rapidly agentic commerce grows as a proportion of total e-commerce. Whereas AI-driven site visitors has surged dramatically, a lot of that consists of brokers shopping and researching somewhat than finishing purchases. If AI brokers start accounting for a major share of accomplished transactions, retailers will face stronger incentives to undertake verification methods like Visa's protocol.
From fraud detection to AI gatekeeping: Visa's $10 billion guess on synthetic intelligence
Visa's transfer displays broader strategic bets on AI throughout the monetary companies business. The corporate has invested $10 billion in know-how over the previous 5 years to cut back fraud and enhance community safety, with AI and machine studying central to these efforts. Visa's fraud detection system analyzes over 500 completely different attributes for every transaction, utilizing AI fashions to assign real-time threat scores to the 300 billion annual transactions flowing by means of its community.
"Each single a kind of transactions has been processed by AI," James Mirfin, Visa's international head of threat and id options, stated in a July 2024 CNBC interview discussing the corporate's fraud prevention efforts. "When you see a brand new sort of fraud occurring, our mannequin will see that, it’ll catch it, it’ll rating these transactions as excessive threat after which our clients can determine to not approve these transactions."
The corporate has additionally moved aggressively into new fee territories past its core card enterprise. In January 2025, Visa partnered with Elon Musk's X (previously Twitter) to offer the infrastructure for a digital pockets and peer-to-peer fee service known as the X Cash Account, competing with companies like Venmo and Zelle. That deal marked Visa's first main partnership within the social media funds area and mirrored the corporate's recognition that fee flows are more and more occurring outdoors conventional e-commerce channels.
The agentic commerce protocol represents an extension of this technique — an try to make sure Visa stays central to fee flows even because the mechanics of buying shift from direct human interplay to AI intermediation. Jack Forestell, Visa's Chief Product & Technique Officer, framed the protocol in expansive phrases: "We consider your entire funds ecosystem has a duty to make sure sellers belief AI brokers with the identical confidence they place of their most valued clients and networks."
The approaching battle for management of AI buying
The actual check for Visa's protocol received't be technical — it is going to be political. As AI brokers turn out to be a bigger pressure in retail, whoever controls the verification infrastructure controls entry to tons of of billions of {dollars} in commerce. Visa's place as gatekeeper offers it monumental leverage, but in addition makes it a goal.
Retailers chafing beneath Visa's current payment construction and dealing with a number of antitrust investigations could resist ceding much more energy to the funds big. Opponents like Google and OpenAI, every with their very own ambitions in commerce, have little incentive to let Visa dictate requirements. Regulators already scrutinizing Visa's market dominance will certainly study whether or not its agent approval course of unfairly benefits sure gamers.
And there's a deeper query lurking beneath the technical specs and company partnerships: In an economic system more and more mediated by AI, who decides which algorithms get to spend our cash? Visa is making an aggressive bid to be that arbiter, wrapping its reply within the language of safety and interoperability. Whether or not retailers, customers, and regulators settle for that proposition will decide not simply the destiny of the Trusted Agent Protocol, however the construction of AI-powered commerce itself.
For now, Visa is shifting ahead with the boldness of an organization that has weathered disruption earlier than. However within the rising world of agentic commerce, being too trusted would possibly show simply as harmful as not being trusted sufficient.
