Visa Broadens AI Commerce Push, Deepens Stablecoin Settlement and Partners with OpenAI

Visa is scaling up its strategy around AI-driven commerce and stablecoin-based settlement, rolling out new tools for agent verification, expanding blockchain settlement coverage, and announcing a partnership with OpenAI aimed at enabling more autonomous digital transactions. The updates were presented at Visa Payments Forum 2026, where the company positioned its roadmap as the next phase of "intelligent, programmable commerce." Visa Chief Product and Strategy Officer Jack Forestell said AI is changing how transactions are initiated, while stablecoins and tokenized forms of money are reshaping how payments settle in the background. The move comes as Mastercard advances its own agentic commerce infrastructure, underscoring intensifying competition among payment networks to become core infrastructure providers for AI-led commerce. Agent verification and merchant readiness tools A central element of Visa's announcement was new identity and verification infrastructure for AI-enabled transactions. Visa introduced an "Agentic Directory," designed to verify both merchants and AI agents operating in automated commerce settings. The company said the system helps merchants confirm whether AI agents interacting with their sites are legitimate, and also enables agents to verify merchants before completing purchases. Visa also launched "Agent Score," built with New Generation, to assess whether merchant websites are optimized for agentic commerce. OpenAI partnership targets secure payments in AI experiences Visa said it has entered a strategic partnership with OpenAI to support secure payments within AI-driven commerce experiences. Under the arrangement, Visa will provide payment credentials, security capabilities, and network infrastructure intended to enable AI-initiated transactions across OpenAI environments. Visa also demonstrated a proof-of-concept that allows AI agents to pay for digital services directly from command-line environments using Visa tokenized credentials. Stablecoins expand within Visa's settlement rails On the settlement side, Visa reported additional progress in blockchain-enabled settlement. The company said stablecoin settlement volume processed through VisaNet has reached an annualized run rate of about $7 billion as of March 2026. Visa is also extending seven-day stablecoin settlement to more banks, acquirers, blockchains, and currencies. In addition, the company plans to support tokenized bank deposits, allowing financial institutions to issue programmable digital money while keeping deposits on their balance sheets. Visa said more than 160 stablecoin-linked card programs are now live or under development globally. Summary Visa expanded its AI commerce infrastructure with OpenAI integrations, new agent verification systems, and tokenized payment tools, while reporting stablecoin settlement volumes running at roughly $7 billion on an annualized basis.