Visa and Mastercard Move to Let AI Agents Handle Payments
The card networks are developing systems that would allow AI agents to autonomously spend money on behalf of consumers.
Visa and Mastercard are pushing into agentic artificial intelligence, developing frameworks that would enable AI-powered software agents to make purchases and manage transactions independently on behalf of human users, according to reporting by Yahoo Finance.
The move marks a significant shift in how the payments industry is approaching automation. Rather than simply processing transactions initiated by people, the networks are exploring infrastructure that lets AI systems act as autonomous financial intermediaries — selecting vendors, authorizing payments, and completing purchases without direct human input at each step.
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The development raises both commercial and consumer-protection questions. Delegating spending authority to software agents introduces new liability considerations for card issuers, merchants, and cardholders alike. How the networks plan to authenticate AI-initiated transactions and set spending guardrails remains a central challenge for the initiative.
For the major card networks, the strategic calculus is clear: as AI assistants become embedded in everyday commerce — from grocery ordering to travel booking — whoever builds the payment rails those agents run on stands to capture significant transaction volume. Visa and Mastercard are each positioning to be the financial backbone of an agentic economy before that market matures.
The timing reflects a broader race across the financial-services sector to integrate large language model technology into core infrastructure, a trend that analysts expect to accelerate through the remainder of the decade. Continue reading at Yahoo Finance.
