Visa has agreed on a strategic collaboration with OpenAI to enable Visa payments within OpenAI's agentic commerce services. The deal links Visa's payment network with one of the largest artificial intelligence platforms.
Under the arrangement, Visa's payment services will be integrated into OpenAI experiences, allowing developers and merchants to accept Visa payments initiated by AI agents. The setup is intended to support transactions that operate within user-set permissions and controls.
Those controls include spending limits, merchant categories, and required approvals. Transactions will use tokenised credentials, along with real-time authorisation and fraud monitoring.
The collaboration forms part of Visa's broader Intelligent Commerce effort, which focuses on extending payment tools into digital environments where AI systems can carry out tasks on behalf of users. The two companies will also explore business uses tied to developer tools and more automated conversational workflows.
The agreement reflects a broader push by payments companies and technology groups to define how AI agents can complete purchases and other financial transactions without removing the safeguards consumers and businesses expect. As AI tools move from search and chat towards direct action, payments have become a key area for infrastructure providers.
For merchants, the arrangement offers a way to accept transactions started inside AI-driven interfaces rather than through traditional websites or apps. For developers, it provides a payments layer tied to an established card network as companies test commercial uses for agent-based software.
Visa's role in the partnership will include the network, credentialing systems, and security infrastructure behind the transactions. OpenAI's role centres on embedding those payment functions into its own experiences and supporting agent-led commerce interactions.
The model is designed to keep users in control of what agents are allowed to do. Transactions are expected to run according to policies set in advance, rather than allowing unrestricted purchasing by software agents.
Commerce shift
The partnership points to a new phase in digital commerce, with AI systems positioned not only as tools for discovery and customer support but also as participants in the transaction itself. That creates opportunities for faster purchasing flows, but also raises questions around authentication, authorisation, fraud prevention, and accountability when software acts on a user's behalf.
Visa said the collaboration is intended to address those issues through tokenisation and transaction monitoring. The company operates in more than 200 countries and territories, giving it a broad reach as technology groups seek payment partners that can work across markets.
OpenAI has been expanding the commercial uses of its technology beyond chat-based interactions, and the agreement with Visa adds payments infrastructure to that effort. The companies also pointed to developer-focused experiences powered by Codex as one area of exploration under the collaboration.
Jack Forestell, Chief Product and Strategy Officer at Visa, set out the company's view of the change underway in commerce.
"AI will transform commerce more profoundly than the internet or mobile technology ever did. As AI agents become active participants in the economy, Visa's focus is to ensure transactions are trusted, secure and seamless. That's the infrastructure we're building with partners like OpenAI," Forestell said.
Marco Mahrus, Head of Partnerships, Commerce at OpenAI, described the role agents are expected to play in transactions across digital services.
"Commerce is going to happen in many more places and in many more ways than it does today, and agents will play an increasingly important role in helping people complete tasks that involve money-from purchases and payments to more complex transactions. By integrating with Visa Intelligent Commerce, we're building the infrastructure for secure, transparent, and user-controlled agentic transactions, helping people do more with AI agents while maintaining confidence that payments are being handled safely and securely," Mahrus said.