Visa introduced the Trusted Agent Protocol on October 14, 2025 - an open framework that enables AI agents to safely initiate and complete card payments at merchant checkpoints. The protocol, developed with Cloudflare and over 10 partners, uses HTTP Message Signature standards to give agents cryptographic credentials that merchants can verify.
How It Works
The Trusted Agent Protocol allows merchants to distinguish legitimate AI shopping agents from bots. Each agent receives agent-specific cryptographic signatures tied to the consumer's Visa credentials. The consumer sets spending parameters and approval rules; the agent operates within those boundaries. The protocol is available via Visa Developer Center and GitHub.
AI Commerce Partners
Visa is working with Anthropic, Microsoft, OpenAI, Perplexity, and Mistral to integrate payments into AI assistants and chatbots. By December 2025, Visa reported hundreds of successful agent-initiated transactions with ecosystem partners, with 30+ partners building in the Visa Intelligent Commerce sandbox.
What This Means
This defines foundational infrastructure for a new payment initiation channel - alongside browser, app, and POS. As AI assistants increasingly handle shopping tasks, the payment networks that establish the authentication and authorization standards will control the rails. Visa's open-source approach aims to make its protocol the industry default before competing standards emerge.