Visa CEO Says AI Shopping Is Here, but Agentic Payments Are Not Yet Ready

Visa CEO Ryan McInerney said consumers are using AI to shop, but they are not yet turning over payment decisions to autonomous agents. Speaking Sept. 8 at the Goldman Sachs Communacopia + Technology Conference, he pointed to trust and identity risk as key blockers.

Consumers shop with AI, then pay conventionally

McInerney said adoption is showing up in product discovery and shopping workflows driven by large language models and other platforms. Transactions still move to sellers’ websites for checkout, leaving a gap between AI-assisted shopping and autonomous payment authorization.

He described the core barrier as trust. Sellers must verify that agent activity is legitimate and authorized by consumers. Consumers must trust agents with money and financial information.

Trust remains the limiting factor

Visa cited survey results from McInerney’s remarks: three-quarters of consumers did not trust agentic platforms to make payments autonomously with their money and financial information. When asked whether they would trust an agent to make payments if Visa were involved, 61% said yes. Among consumers who use LLMs at least weekly, that figure rose to more than 70%.

Fraud prevention is also shifting earlier in the flow. McInerney said clients are seeking products that address identity risk before it results in a fraudulent transaction, calling identity a “critical area of vulnerability.”

Visa targets identity risk with BioCatch

McInerney discussed Visa’s planned BioCatch acquisition as part of its approach to protect identities on mobile devices. He said cybersecurity is a top concern for financial institutions, describing it as a “top 3 issue” for every client he talks to globally.

Visa is also applying AI internally. McInerney said its teams are producing 80% more code commits, reducing the time required to design and build a product by 80% and developing features 65% faster.

Tokens, Pismo, and new markets beyond consumer payments

McInerney said Visa’s token strategy creates distribution for risk-and-identity and transaction solutions beyond the payment credential itself. He said Visa has captured only a “very low single digits” share of the addressable markets it sees across issuer services, acceptance, risk and identity, and advisory.

On processing, McInerney said Visa acquired Pismo due to two drivers: banks deciding whether to move to the cloud and FinTechs in emerging markets struggling to find issuer-processing technology global enough, nimble enough, and cloud-native enough to scale.

He said Visa sees demand in the U.S. among small and mid-sized banks and FinTechs seeking integrated credit and debit issuer processing, while larger issuers are likely to keep customized credit and debit stacks separate. Core modernization has been slower, with few large banks globally moving their cores to the cloud, though many are considering or working on it. McInerney linked cloud-based cores to faster product deployment.

Visa Direct, stablecoins, and cross-border opportunity

McInerney estimated the remaining addressable market in consumer payments at roughly $2 trillion, much of it still cash and checks. He said Visa Direct reaches 18 billion endpoints across accounts, cards and wallets, supporting P2P, B2C and C2B transactions.

For higher-value cross-border B2B payments, he said stablecoins could serve some use cases. Visa sees product-market fit in two areas: about 50 countries where consumers, families and businesses want to hold U.S. dollars but face barriers through bank accounts, and cross-border money movement including remittances and B2B payments.

He cited recent growth figures for Visa’s U.S. business at roughly 6% to 8% for about a year and a half, reaching 10% growth in the latest quarter and running at approximately 9% through August. Cross-border growth increased from about 12% in the previous quarter to 14% through August, with eCommerce growing faster than travel.

Why it matters

Visa’s executives are framing AI’s next payment phase around trust, identity protection, and earlier fraud controls, while expanding infrastructure through tokens and processing modernization. The company is also positioning Visa Direct, issuer services, and cross-border use cases as the near-term outlets for growth beyond consumer checkout.