Payment giants Mastercard and Visa are building infrastructure for AI-led shopping, though consumer trust remains a hurdle as shoppers prioritize price alerts over autonomous purchasing.
Mastercard launched an AI agent payment option with virtual cards and guardrails, aiming to set standards for agentic commerce.
Visa partnered with Alchemy and is deploying Visa Intelligent Commerce to compete in AI-driven payments.
Meta's AI assistant Muse can search and navigate checkout but requires final user approval for purchases.
ACI Worldwide's executives commented on the agentic commerce infrastructure race and its consumer research indicates low comfort with autonomous AI purchases.
Mastercard and Visa are aggressively developing AI-driven payment solutions to capture the emerging agentic commerce market. While Mastercard introduced virtual card guardrails to facilitate autonomous shopping, consumer research from ACI Worldwide suggests significant hesitation, with only 7% of shoppers currently willing to allow AI to complete purchases without manual approval.
Mastercard is utilizing a digital record system called 'Verifiable Intent' to track user instructions, though the company has not yet fully clarified liability for unauthorized agent purchases.