Defense and Compliance Attorneys
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AI “agentic commerce” is emerging, where bots can search, compare, and actually pay for things like flights or shopping on your behalf, and Visa and Mastercard are building the payment rails to make that mainstream by around 2026. They want your card to remain the default way these agents pay, while adding new security, identity, and dispute tools tailored to bots instead of humans.
What “agentic commerce” means
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AI agents will be able to handle the full funnel: product discovery, price comparison, and checkout, all inside chat-style interfaces instead of traditional websites or apps.
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Typical use cases being piloted include booking flights and vacations, reordering groceries, and auto-buying items when prices drop below thresholds you set.
What Visa is doing
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Visa has launched an Intelligent Commerce program that exposes APIs so AI agents (e.g., in ChatGPT or other models) can use tokenized Visa credentials, spending rules, and identity checks to complete purchases.
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It has also introduced a “Trusted Agent Protocol” to help merchants distinguish legitimate consumer agents from malicious bots and to pass payment credentials securely with less checkout friction.
What Mastercard is doing
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Mastercard’s Agent Pay framework lets registered AI agents initiate payments using “agentic tokens,” an extension of its card tokenization that ties each transaction to an authenticated agent acting for a specific user.
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Its Merchant Acceptance Framework is designed as a no‑code layer so merchants can safely recognize and interact with AI agents at scale throughout the transaction process.
Timeline and where this is headed
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Pilot programs and early real transactions are already underway, with payment executives publicly pointing to mainstream consumer use in “months rather than years,” often citing 2026 for broader rollout in markets like Europe.
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Card networks expect AI agents to run on big platforms (ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot, etc.) as well as retailer and bank bots, with new liability rules and dispute processes to handle cases where an agent “messes up” a booking or purchase.
What it means for you as a shopper
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You will be able to set budgets, categories, and preferences (airlines, cabin class, brands), then let an agent execute purchases within those constraints using stored Visa or Mastercard credentials.
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The upside is convenience and likely better price discovery; the downside is new risks around fraud, mistaken purchases, and loss of direct control, which is why the networks are emphasizing stronger authentication, traceability, and clearer consumer controls for agent-initiated payments.
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