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Visa and Mastercard both introduced payment tools that promise to see AI agents not only help shoppers discover products based on their preferences but also make purchases for them as well.
In announcing the launch of Mastercard Agent Pay, Mastercard stated, “This means that for a soon-to-be-30-year-old planning her milestone birthday party, she can now chat with an AI agent to proactively curate a selection of outfits and accessories from local boutiques and online retailers based on her style, the venue’s ambience, and weather forecasts. Based on her preferences and feedback, the intelligent agent can make the purchase, and also recommend the best way to pay, for example using Mastercard One Credential.”
Introducing Visa Intelligent Commerce, Visa said, “Millions of people will soon rely on AI to find the perfect sweater, research a new vacation spot or fulfill their grocery list. Visa will remove friction from the payment itself, making it possible to transact in an AI-driven world in a way that is secure and trusted.”
In both cases, the use of tokenized digital credentials, already commonly used to support e-commerce transactions, will help keep consumers’ credit card data private while providing transparency and supporting trust for banks and merchants.
The payment processors stressed that consumers remain in control, including having the option to stipulate that any final call on purchases be approved by on-device biometrics or another authentication method. For AI-automated purchases, users can set purchase limits, allowed categories, or other conditions.
Visa’s chief product and strategy officer, Jack Forestell, told Fortune that for repetitive, chore-like tasks such as ordering groceries, consumers may want an agent that “just powers through it and automatically goes and does stuff for us.”
For sophisticated search and decision-making capabilities, such as travel booking, consumers may rely on agents with some limits initially. Over time, the agents may gain more autonomy to “go spend up to $1,500 on any airline to get me from A to B,” Forestell said.
PayPal also recently joined Amazon, OpenAI, Google, and Perplexity in introducing AI-shopping tools in what many are terming agentic commerce.
It’s still unknown how open consumers are to using AI even for discovery. KPMG’s Summer 2025 Consumer Pulse survey of more than 1,500 U.S. consumers found only 34% comfortable with companies using GenAI to analyze personal data, while 63% had not used AI shopping tools and don’t plan to.