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Visa's Innovations in Digital Commerce

On June 10, 2026, Visa held the Visa Payments Forum in San Francisco, California, where the company introduced groundbreaking innovations in artificial intelligence (AI), stablecoins, and tokens. These advances aim to empower clients by facilitating next-generation commerce with a focus on increasing speed, automation, and sophistication while maintaining trust, security, and control.

In his keynote address, Jack Forestell, Visa's Chief Product and Strategy Officer, explained how fundamental shifts in AI and stablecoins are transforming both the front-end and back-end of money movement. He emphasized Visa's role in ensuring these transformations operate safely, reliably, and globally for all ecosystem participants.

The New Era of AI in Commerce

Visa's Intelligent Commerce platform signifies a new era of agent-based commerce where AI agents can discover, initiate, and complete transactions securely. During the forum, Forestell highlighted how AI is reshaping how transactions are commenced and processed, thus speeding up the design, development, and delivery of new commerce experiences.

Visa is actively integrating with major AI platforms to ensure that transactions initiated by agents maintain transparency and trustworthiness, and this includes:

1. Agent Scoring

This feature allows merchants to assess their websites' ability to accommodate agent-based commerce. AI agents can navigate merchant sites and evaluate the content's comprehension and task completion.

2. Agent Directory

Merchants need to ascertain whether agents operating on their sites are trustworthy. The Agent Directory will consist of verified agents and merchants recognized by Visa as legitimate participants in agent-based commerce.

3. Partnership with OpenAI

Visa's strategic partnership with OpenAI aims to facilitate secure payments in agent-based commerce, enabling seamless and reliable transactions across all experiences on the OpenAI platform. Visa will provide its vast network, authentication capabilities, and security infrastructure to enhance commerce experiences.

4. Large Transaction Model

An AI model trained on billions of transactions enhances fraud detection and optimizes authorization performance while reducing false declines, eliminating long-standing industry trade-offs.

Visa also demonstrated early-stage concepts from its Crypto Labs team, showcasing how AI agents can use Visa's tokenized credentials for payments directly at terminals using a command-line interface. Forestell remarked that future transactions will likely be driven by developers utilizing AI tools.

Enhancements to Token Functionality

In a significant leap for digital commerce, Visa announced enhancements to its token functionality, aimed at imbuing digital payment credentials with greater data, context, and reliability.

Visa's tokens now boast advanced and secure datasets for digital payments. As commerce expands into new channels and agents, Visa will provide detailed insights concerning transaction types, locations, and users. The introduction of token assurance signals, which evaluate tokens throughout their life cycle, will enhance trust in each transaction based on behavioral history and issuing information. These improvements will ultimately reduce false declines for merchants, positively impacting consumer convenience.

Advancing Stablecoin Transactions

Visa also shared advancements regarding payments and value transfer through stablecoin and blockchain infrastructure:

1. Tokenized Deposits

Visa plans to construct a technology layer that enables banks to convert traditional deposits into programmable, always-on digital money, allowing them to achieve speed and flexibility similar to stablecoins while retaining funds on their balance sheets.

2. Expanding Stablecoin Payments

Visa is expanding pilot programs for stablecoin payments across various regions, blockchains, and currencies. Since beginning pilots in early 2025, Visa has successfully facilitated billions of dollars worth of stablecoins on VisaNet, with an annual run rate of approximately $7 billion by March 2026. Moreover, Visa aims to extend seven-day-a-week settlements for acquirers, enhancing flexibility and frequency throughout the ecosystem.

3. Stablecoin-Linked Cards

Visa continues to expand its stablecoin-linked card program so that consumers and businesses can utilize stablecoin balances at any Visa merchant. Currently, over 160 programs are either operational or in development, with further acceleration expected.

Facilitating Client Modernization

With these innovations, Visa emphasized a consistent message from its clients: modernization is essential, but a complete overhaul of systems is often unrealistic. By offering modular, cloud-native capabilities that integrate with existing infrastructures, Visa enables banks, fintechs, acquirers, and merchants to modernize at their preferred pace.

For issuers, the core banking platform from Pismo offers flexible, real-time banking and processing capabilities, making phased transitions from legacy systems feasible. Additionally, Unified Checkout provides a consistent method for accepting both card and non-card payments through a single orchestration layer, adapting to advancing commerce models, including AI-driven transactions.

Leading the Evolution of Commerce

Visa's announcements at the Payments Forum highlight a clear vision: the company is evolving to connect AI, programmable money, and cutting-edge infrastructure to ensure clients can gain a competitive edge now while preparing for the future. As Forestell concluded, historical context shows that innovation alone does not guarantee scale; it is trust, security, and global reach that determine success.

By building these foundations, Visa is poised to usher in a new era for all forms of commerce.

About Visa

Visa operates as a global leader in electronic payments, connecting consumers, businesses, financial institutions, and governments through payment transactions in over 200 countries and territories. Visa's mission is to link the world through the most innovative, convenient, reliable, and safe payment network, contributing to the prosperity of individuals, businesses, and economies. We believe that an inclusive economy that benefits everyone improves lives and connects access to the future of payments. For more information, visit Visa.com or www.visa.co.jp.