Visa has launched its Agentic Ready programme in Singapore with 13 issuers to help banks and fintech firms prepare for payments initiated by AI agents.
The programme allows issuers to test and validate agent-initiated transactions in a controlled, production-grade environment, with consumer controls built into the process.
Visa Agentic Ready is supported by Visa’s trust layer, which includes tokenisation, identity, risk management and payment controls.
The first phase will focus on issuer readiness before wider use cases are scaled.
The Singapore partners include Bank of China Singapore, CIMB Singapore, DBS Bank, DCS, GXS Bank, HSBC Singapore, Maybank Singapore, OCBC, Standard Chartered, StraitsX, Trust Bank, UQPay and UOB.
Visa expects more partners to join this year.
Adeline Kim, Country Manager for Singapore and Brunei at Visa, said,
“Singapore is an innovation hub where ideas move quickly from concept to real-world impact, making it the ideal market to progress agentic commerce. A Visa-commissioned study underscores strong consumer readiness, where close to 77 per cent of Singapore residents already use generative AI tools in their daily lives, and eight in 10 rely on AI assistance when shopping online.
We want to ensure that in this early phase, we work with as many partners as possible to ensure they have the right technology to prepare for this next phase of commerce, where AI agents can discover, decide and pay on behalf of consumers.”
The launch follows Visa’s March pilot with DBS, which focused on everyday use cases for agentic commerce.
Visa Agentic Ready is part of Visa Intelligent Commerce, a wider set of initiatives for AI-driven shopping and payments.
The payment giant is also working with merchants and ecosystem partners to identify consumer use cases for agentic commerce.
Visa recently introduced Intelligent Commerce Connect globally to help merchants connect to agentic commerce through the Visa Acceptance Platform.
The solution supports payment initiation, tokenisation, authentication and spend controls, while helping merchants make their catalogues discoverable in AI shopping experiences.
Featured image: Edited by Fintech News Singapore, based on image by user6724086 via Magnific
