AI-Powered Shopping: The Rise of Agentic Commerce

As Meta explores AI-driven advertising, Visa is unveiling its own vision for the future of commerce, where AI agents act as personalized shoppers.

The company’s initiative, Visa Intelligent Commerce, presents a model for how 'trusted' AI agents can find, shop, and pay for items based on pre determined consumer preferences¹.

A New Era: Conversational and Agentic Commerce

Artificial intelligence is reshaping how people shop and pay. Consumers are already interacting with AI through chatbots, and soon they may make purchases directly through them². What's known as conversational commerce, is evolving into 'agentic commerce', where autonomous agents act on our behalf to make purchases³.

In this new model, AI agents could help us find items, plan vacations, or fulfill routine tasks like grocery shopping. This shift has the potential to rewire shopping as we know it.

Visa Intelligent Commerce: Empowering AI Agents to Shop and Pay

At the heart of this shift is Visa Intelligent Commerce, a program introduced at the Visa Global Product Drop. The initiative opens Visa’s global payment network to developers building foundational AI agents and includes partnerships with companies such as Anthropic, IBM, Microsoft, Mistral AI, OpenAI, Perplexity, Samsung, and Stripe.

The goal: make AI-powered shopping more secure, personalized, and convenient, with consumers retaining full control over what their agents are allowed to do.

Key Capabilities of Visa Intelligent Commerce

• AI-Ready Cards: Traditional card credentials are replaced with tokenized digital versions, allowing developers to securely assign payment permissions to a user’s AI agents⁶.

  
  

• Simple and Secure AI Payments: Consumers can set spending limits and transaction conditions, providing a layer of control and clarity over agent-driven purchases⁶.

  
  

• AI-Powered Personalization: With consumer consent, AI agents can access Visa’s spend and purchase insights to deliver personalized shopping experiences, such as recommending items based on a user’s style, preferences, and price ranges⁶.

Risks and Trust Concerns

While agentic commerce offers convenience, it also raises important concerns, especially around trust and control. AI agents must be trusted not just by users, but also by banks and merchants³.  One major risk is that an agent could make unauthorized purchases and "go rogue"⁶.

There are also broader ethical concerns. If AI takes over most purchasing decisions, it could limit consumer choice and encourage overspending. While Visa highlights user safeguards, some critics point out a conflict of interest: platforms profit when consumers spend more⁷.

Opportunities for Retailers and Brands

The growth of conversational and agentic commerce creates both challenges and opportunities for retailers. As AI agents take over more of the shopping journey, merchants must ensure their product data is accurate, complete, and easy for machines to interpret. Without high-quality data, products risk being overlooked or misrepresented by AI engines⁸.

This shift may also reduce the need for traditional advertising, like search ads, and increase the importance of personalization, real-time inventory updates, and AI integration⁸.

Brand loyalty may also be tested, as AI agents prioritize convenience, price, and fit over established preferences. Retailers that align with consumer values and optimize for AI platforms will gain a competitive edge⁷.

Final Thought:

Ready or not, AI agents may soon be finding, shopping, and buying on our behalf, reshaping the way we interact with commerce entirely.

Footnotes / Sources:

1. Visa Press Release: “Visa Global Product Drop.” (2025)

2. Axios: “Chatbots and AI Shopping.” (2025)

3. TechCrunch: “Visa and Mastercard Unveil AI-Powered Shopping.” (2025)

4. Forbes: What Visa’s Big Bet on AI-Driven Commerce Means for the Future of Shopping.” (2025)

5. Visa: “Intelligent Commerce Overview.” (2025)

6. Visa : “AI-Ready Cards, Secure Payments, and Tokenization.” (2025)

7. Forbes: “The Ethics of AI-Driven Consumption.” (2025)

8. TechCrunch: “The Retail Challenge in the Age of AI.” (2025)