As artificial intelligence plays a growing role in purchasing decisions, Visa is launching its Trusted Agent protocol to give merchants more visibility into the process.
In the emerging agentic commerce environment, merchants will need the ability to screen AI agents and filter out bots and bad actors. Visa’s platform was developed to enable exactly that—using agent-specific cryptographic signatures and other unique identifiers.
These identifiers can convey information about an agent’s intent, such as details about the products being sought or evidence of prior interactions between the consumer and merchant. Visa’s system can also determine whether an agent has payment functionality compatible with a merchant’s preferred checkout methods.
The Continued AI Emergence
Visa underscored that this solution was necessitated by the continued rise of AI in retail transactions. The company cited data from Adobe showing that generative AI traffic increased by 4,700% year over year as of July, with most consumers who have used AI reporting that it has improved their shopping experience.
These trends have driven more companies to deploy AI across an array of use cases. For example, Klarna teamed up with Google to leverage its AI models to create personalized visuals and customized marketing campaigns within Klarna’s app.
Shepherding the Agents
Agentic commerce takes this a step further, giving AI agents the power to initiate and complete payments. This has naturally raised concerns about the safety and security of agentic transactions.
In Google’s Agent Payments Protocol (AP2)—another framework designed to shepherd AI agents—safeguards are implemented through the use of mandates. These digital contracts securely verify that an AI agent has followed a user’s instructions, including detailed data about the parameters and timing of a purchase.
Regardless of the specific protocol, security and fraud mitigation controls are necessary for agentic commerce to advance. This presents a challenging task: beyond detecting bots and fraudulent activity, these systems must also minimize false positives—while maintaining full transparency for both consumers and merchants throughout the process.
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