Payments in Agentic Commerce

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As AI continues to integrate into our daily lives and expand its capabilities, new operational challenges are emerging. One of them is how payments will be handled in the context of Agentic Commerece

In other words: what happens when we rely on AI agents to perform tasks on our behalf? And more importantly, what happens when those tasks involve financial transactions?

This is no longer just about authorization. It raises questions around identity validation, dispute management, and accountability. You can already imagine the complexity this could create.

Visa is already moving in this direction, launching a pilot program in Europe with 20 banks to prepare for the moment when agentic AI becomes mainstream.

Participating institutions include Banco Santander, Citibank, Revolut, Barclays, HSBC UK, Nationwide, DZ Bank AG, Nexi Group, among others.

There are high expectations around Agentic Commerce. A recent Deloitte study estimates that by 2030, it could account for 30% of online sales- though this should be taken with caution. Deloitte supports this projection by comparing ChatGPT’s 2.5 billion daily prompts with Google’s 13.7 billion daily searches. But here’s the catch: a prompt is not the same as a search — it’s often just one part of a broader conversation.

Actual search-like queries on ChatGPT are closer to 66 million per day. So, we should be careful when interpreting these projections — context matters.

AI is undoubtedly a growing force in our daily lives, but there’s still a gap between reality and some of the more optimistic forecasts (especially those coming from Deloitte).

Today, ChatGPT-driven traffic accounts for roughly 1.5% of total e-commerce sales. However, its conversion rate is about 31% higher than traditional Google search.

The key lies in understanding how these channels work: AI interactions are intent-driven and focused on answers, whereas traditional search is more exploratory. This alone opens up a much broader discussion- from SEO to GEO- but that’s a topic for another post.

Coming back to payments, and after adding a bit of realism to the conversation, it’s clear that the banking sector needs to be ready.

This pilot aims to define security protocols, scalability frameworks, and transaction traceability within a controlled environment — before any large-scale rollout.

Visa’s focus on Europe is no coincidence. The region already has a highly advanced banking infrastructure, with tokenization, passkeys, advanced authentication methods, and a strong regulatory framework driven by SCA (Strong Customer Authentication).

It’s encouraging to see the financial sector preparing for what’s coming. As for the real impact of Agentic Commerce- we’ll see.

One thing is certain: along the way, there will be surprises. And that’s only natural when dealing with new technologies and evolving processes.