- Visa-OpenAI partnership brings agent payments to ChatGPT, Atlas
- Tokenized credentials and security measures keep your money safe
- MasterCard announced similar technology last year
Visa has announced a partnership with OpenAI to bring secure payments into AI-powered and agentic e-commerce experiences, including those conducted through ChatGPT and the Atlas browser.
Under this new collaboration, AI agents operating within OpenAI products will be able to initiate and complete Visa-supported transactions on behalf of users.
It essentially lays the foundation for OpenAI to use agents to take care of the entire purchase journey on behalf of users, including making purchases, payments and bookings.
OpenAI gains new access to Visa payments
That means developers and merchants will get a new standardized way to accept agent-made Visa payments, but the payments giant stressed that safeguards would remain in place, with controls like spending limits, merchant category restrictions and authentication requirements all available to end users.
Just as we’ve come to expect Apple Pay’s added security of not sharing our card details, Visa will also use tokenized credentials to avoid revealing the card’s finer details.
“As AI agents become active participants in the economy, Visa’s focus is to ensure transactions are reliable, secure and seamless,” explained Chief Product and Strategy Officer Jack Forestell. “That’s the infrastructure we’re building with partners like OpenAI.”
While we’re very much in the early days of agent payments and agent e-commerce in general, piece-by-piece messaging risks leaving holes in the broader ecosystem. This particular partnership puts Visa in the hands of OpenAI, but excludes other AI companies like Gemini and Claude.
Other payment providers, such as MasterCard and Amex, would also have to stand behind similar initiatives. A year ago, MasterCard did just that, announcing its own Agent Pay platform as a baseline for future agent payments.
“By integrating with Visa Intelligent Commerce, we are building the infrastructure for secure, transparent and user-controlled agent transactions,” added OpenAI Head of Partnerships, Commerce Marco Mahrus.
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