- Visa-OpenAI Partnership Brings Agent Payments to ChatGPT and 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 to AI- and agent-powered e-commerce experiences, including those made through ChatGPT and the Atlas browser.
Under this new collaboration, AI agents operating within OpenAI products will be able to initiate and complete Visa-backed transactions on behalf of users.
Basically, it lays the foundation for OpenAI to use agents to handle the entire purchasing process on behalf of users, including purchases, payments, and reservations.
OpenAI gains new access to Visa payments
It means developers and merchants will get a new, standardized way to accept Visa payments made by agents, but the payments giant emphasized that safeguards would remain with controls such as spending limits, merchant category restrictions, and approval requirements all available to end users.
Just as we expected Apple Pay’s added security to not share our card data, Visa will also use tokenized credentials to avoid exposing the finer details of the card.
“As AI agents become active participants in the economy, Visa’s focus is on ensuring transactions are reliable, secure and seamless,” explained Chief Strategy and Product Officer Jack Forestell. “That’s the infrastructure we’re building with partners like OpenAI.”
While we’re in the early days of agent payments and agent ecommerce in general, piece-by-piece ads risk leaving gaps 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 need to support similar initiatives. A year ago, MasterCard did exactly that, announcing its own Agent Pay platform as the foundation 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 Marco Mahrus.
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