Visa has introduced new tools for AI-led payments, tokenised credentials and stablecoin settlement.
Announced at Visa Payments Forum 2026, the updates aim to prepare its network for transactions increasingly handled by AI agents and blockchain-based systems.
Jack Forestell, Visa’s Chief Product and Strategy Officer, said,
“AI is transforming the front end of commerce. Stablecoins are reshaping the back end.
Visa’s role is to enable it to work securely, reliably and at global scale, for every participant in the ecosystem.”
It is expanding the Visa Intelligent Commerce platform to let AI agents make payments on behalf of consumers and businesses within limits set by users.
Its new Agent Score will assess whether merchant websites can support AI-led transactions.
An Agentic Directory will also list merchants and AI agents verified by Visa.
The company is working with OpenAI to connect conversational AI with Visa’s payment infrastructure.
It has also developed a Large Transaction Model trained on billions of transactions to improve fraud detection and payment approval rates while reducing false declines.
Visa Expands Stablecoin Settlement
Visa is adding more information to tokenised payment credentials, including the transaction type, payment environment and identity of the initiator.
Its Token Assurance Signal will assess how a token was issued and used to provide banks with a real-time trust indicator.
Visa also plans to help banks turn traditional deposits into programmable digital funds while keeping the money on their balance sheets.
The company is expanding stablecoin settlement across more regions, currencies and blockchains. Activity through VisaNet had reached an annualised run rate of about US$7 billion as of March 2026.
Issuing banks can already settle with Visa onchain seven days a week. Visa is now working to extend the service to acquirers.
More than 160 stablecoin-linked card programmes are live or under development globally.
Visa has launched its Agentic Ready initiative and completed a test of an AI agent-initiated card payment with Bank of China (Hong Kong).
Featured image: Edited by Fintech News Singapore, based on image by toia via Magnific
