Visa has introduced Intelligent Commerce Connect, a new infrastructure layer designed to let AI agents make purchases on behalf of users. The company said developers and merchants can use a single integration to enable agents to browse products, select items, and complete payments inside AI-driven experiences.
Visa described the product as a token-vault-agnostic on-ramp for agentic AI use cases. Through the Visa Acceptance Platform, the system combines payment initiation, tokenization, authentication, and spending controls in one connection. According to Visa, Intelligent Commerce Connect supports both Visa and non-Visa payments and works with major AI agent protocols.
One connection for payments, authentication, and controls
The company said merchants can make their product catalogs discoverable inside AI platforms while handling tokenization, authentication, and compliance through the same integration. Users link their Visa cards and set spending rules first. After that, AI agents can transact only within those limits, while merchants continue receiving funds through existing payment processors.
The platform is currently in pilot with select partners, with a broader rollout planned later this year. The launch arrives as crypto networks including Ethereum, Tron, and Solana seek to become transaction rails for machine-driven commerce, putting Visa’s card network into direct competition for how automated payments are routed.
Built on Visa CLI and early x402 integrations
The release extends Visa’s earlier “Visa CLI” experiment announced in March, which allowed AI agents to execute same-day payments. Intelligent Commerce Connect pushes that effort into a broader commercial framework by packaging payment access, verification, and control features into a single layer.
In a parallel integration, AI fintech firm Nevermined connected the system through Coinbase’s x402 protocol, allowing AI agents to buy digital goods and services without manual input. Erik Reppel said x402 gives agents an open standard to request payments programmatically, and that the launch shows how the protocol can work with secure card infrastructure for real transactions between AI agents and merchants.
Data on the x402 website shows the protocol processed $24 million in transaction volume over the past 30 days. Visa did not disclose the names of the current pilot partners or the expected scope of the full rollout.