Visa has rolled out a new tool to help merchants recognize and trust artificial intelligence (AI) agents making purchases on behalf of customers.
Basically, Visa wants to make sure the next time your AI assistant buys sneakers or dresses on your behalf, the merchant won’t label it as malicious, panic and block the payment.
The tool, called “Trusted Agent Protocol”, was announced Tuesday, October 14th, and is designed to make AI agent-driven shopping as seamless and secure as regular online shopping.
Jack Forestell, Visa’s chief product and strategy officer, said the company has been working with sellers, issuers, and payment partners over the past year to make sure transactions initiated by AI agents are treated with the same confidence as those made by human buyers.
“We believe the entire payments ecosystem has a responsibility to ensure sellers trust AI agents with the same confidence they place in their most valued customers and networks,” Forestell said.
The protocol offers merchants a no-code way to identify and interact securely with AI agents that intend to buy, reducing false flags from bot-detection systems and improving the checkout experience for verified users.
AI agents are quietly becoming major players in e-commerce. It comes at a time when AI-driven traffic to U.S. retail sites has jumped more than 4,700%, according to Visa.
An AI assistant can now filter millions of options to suggest a single black dress for a summer cocktail party, and even complete the transaction.
That surge is creating new headaches for merchants, balancing fraud prevention with accommodating legitimate AI-powered shopping.
Visa’s new framework aims to separate “trusted AI agents,” those acting on behalf of real customers, from malicious bots and rogue automation.
According to Visa, early partners in the pilot phase include Adyen, Checkout.com, Fiserv, Microsoft, Nuvei, and Shopify, which Visa says have already provided “insightful feedback” during testing.
This holiday season could be the first real test of scale, where trusted AI agents can help drive smoother shopping experiences and payments while the industry braces for a parallel rise in AI-enabled fraud.