Visa Builds Agentic Commerce Infrastructure as Credentials Reach 5.2 Billion
Visa is expanding its payments infrastructure around agentic commerce, stablecoins and tokenisation as its global credential base reaches 5.2 billion and the company prepares for a future in which software agents can make authorised purchases on behalf of consumers and businesses.
Visa Builds Agentic Commerce Infrastructure
Visa chief executive Ryan McInerney said trust remains the biggest obstacle to scaling agentic commerce, with the immediate <a href="https://bitcomme.com/three-mse-faculty-earn-lab-venture-challenge-startup-funding/” title=”Three MSE faculty earn Lab Venture Challenge startup funding”>challenge centred on proving an agent’s identity, linking it to a customer and confirming that transactions remain within the user’s instructions.
The company is working with nearly 50 AI partners already in production and expects that number to double in the coming months.
Tokenisation Creates the Foundation for Agentic Payments
Visa’s credential base increased 6% to 5.2 billion at the end of its fiscal fourth quarter.
More than half of available credentials are now tokenised, while more than 60% of e-commerce transactions use tokenised credentials. Visa processed tokenised transactions across 200 countries and territories during the year.
That infrastructure is increasingly relevant to agentic payments because software agents need secure, limited and verifiable access to payment credentials.
Visa is already testing this model in commercial payments through a live pilot with BILL and Billtrust. The initiative allows trusted AI agents to initiate and complete approved invoice payments through supplier portals using Visa Intelligent Commerce and its Trusted Agent Protocol.
B2B Payments Emerge as an Early Agentic Use Case
Business payments are likely to provide one of the clearest early applications.
Invoice settlement, supplier validation and payment execution already follow structured approval workflows, making them suitable for automation where permissions can be tightly controlled.
Visa is also applying agentic tools internally. More than 60% of its product development and engineering teams are using an agentic toolchain, while McInerney said a 12-person team delivered stablecoin-platform functionality in seven weeks.
Stablecoins Move Further Into Production
Visa Direct processed more than 15 billion transactions worth around $1.5 trillion during fiscal 2026, while its stablecoin prefunding and cross-border money movement service has moved from pilot into commercial production.
Visa’s separate stablecoin settlement business has also exceeded a $25 billion annualised run rate, up tenfold year-on-year. Settlement currently supports five stablecoins across 10 blockchains, while stablecoin-linked card volumes rose by more than 150%.
The common thread across these initiatives is infrastructure that can support multiple forms of digital value and increasingly automated payment decisions.
Visa’s strategy suggests the next phase of payments competition will not simply be about issuing more credentials. It will be about making those credentials programmable, tokenised and trusted enough to operate safely in an increasingly agent-driven commerce environment.
