With AI accelerating operational efficiency in an ever-evolving payments landscape, Visa has announced a new AI-powered tool that seeks to “transform” the commerce market.
Visa unveiled its Visa Intelligent Commerce solution on April 30 at the Visa Global Product Drop event, aiming to combine AI with its expertise in digital payments to deliver a commerce shopping tool that transforms how consumers and merchants make retail decisions.
“As new ways to pay emerge, they need to run on a network that is always on – that is safe, secure, scalable and relentlessly innovating,” said Visa CEO Ryan McInerney.
“We are taking the power of our network and our decades-long expertise to bring new products and solutions that will transform commerce and bring trust and security to AI-enabled payments.”
Visa dives into AI personalisation
Visa is looking to do this with the Visa Intelligence Commerce solution by expanding its infrastructure to integrate AI technology to its payment terminals at merchant locations, providing a more personalised approach to commerce.
With more than 4.8 billion Visa credentials at over 150 million merchants, Visa has collaborated with AI leaders, such as Microsoft and OpenAI, to expand its latest offering globally.
AI has been transformative in being able to calculate algorithms and tailor them to consumers to provide greater insights into where to pay and shop, based on their current and previous preferences.
AI has been the poster child of the 21st century, proving time and time again that processes can be streamlined and made more efficient. Visa is now harnessing these benefits.
“Historically, Visa has used AI to protect consumers, harnessing it to help combat fraud. Now, we will also enable AI to empower consumers, fundamentally shifting digital commerce to make it more personal, more relevant and more delightful,” added McInerney.
“For any AI commerce use case to take hold, the payment is a critical enabler of success. If there is no payment, there is no commerce. That’s the expertise and trust that Visa brings.”
A new stablecoin link
While the Visa Intelligence Commerce tool was at the forefront of the global payment company’s new product line, Visa also confirmed two new features.
Working alongside Bridge, a stablecoin orchestration platform recently acquired by Stripe, Visa will be providing a new card product to enable fintechs to offer a stablecoin link to Visa cardholders to perform payments with the digital currency.
The single API integration will allow merchants to offer a more seamless approach for consumers to make stablecoin transactions. Visa cardholders will be able to make payments at any merchant location that supports Visa.
“This is a massive unlock for developers who can now build truly scalable issuing products for their users,” said Zach Abrams, CEO and Co-Founder of Bridge. “Everyone already knows how to use cards for payments, and now everyone will be able to use stablecoins with just a tap of their card.”
The launch of the new Visa stablecoin link will be rolled out initially in Latin America, in countries such as Argentina, Colombia, Mexico and Peru.
This focus on the Latin America market first comes after significant growth of cryptocurrency and digital asset adoption in countries like Argentina, as inflation has hit consumers’ pockets and digital currency has become more of a viable alternative.
A BNPL expansion
Similar to the growth of digital currencies, Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) has also seen incremental growth amongst global consumers which Visa can not ignore.
This is why Visa launched the Flex Credential solution in November 2024, an installment-based payment option to provide added customer flexibility at checkout.
Following on from its launch, Visa announced that it will be working alongside BNPL leader Klarna to roll out the debut of the first debit-to-BNPL card in Europe.
Both companies will also collaborate on developing new use cases that seek to unearth how BNPL can be used to increase lines of credit, investment accounts, rewards, commercial cards, and more.
