Visa and Mastercard unveil AI-powered shopping

Artificial intelligence is not just infiltrating the startup world. Now, credit card giants Visa and Mastercard are getting into the AI game. Visa announced on Wednesday “Intelligent Commerce,” which it says enables AI “to find and buy.”

AI agents will be able to shop and make purchases on behalf of consumers, based on preselected preferences.

In a statement, Visa Chief Product and Strategy Officer Jack Forestell said: “Each consumer sets the limits, and Visa helps manage the rest.”

Visa says that it is collaborating with a mix of tech giants and startups to develop AI-powered shopping experiences that are “more personal, more secure, and more convenient.” Those companies include Anthropic, IBM, Microsoft, Mistral AI, OpenAI, Perplexity, Samsung, and Stripe, among others.

The move follows Mastercard’s announcement on Tuesday that it would give AI agents the ability to shop online for consumers. Mastercard said its new Agent Pay offering “will enhance generative AI conversations for people and businesses alike” by integrating payments into tailored recommendations and insights already provided on conversational platforms.

In a statement, it said: “This means that for a soon-to-be-30-year-old planning her milestone birthday party, she can now chat with an AI agent to proactively curate a selection of outfits and accessories from local boutiques and online retailers based on her style, the venue’s ambience, and weather forecasts. Based on her preferences and feedback, the intelligent agent can make the purchase, and also recommend the best way to pay, for example, using Mastercard One Credential.”

Mastercard said it will work with Microsoft on new use cases to scale “agentic commerce,” as well as with IBM, Braintree, and Checkout.com on other aspects of AI-powered shopping. 

Visa and Mastercard aren’t the only ones allowing for AI-powered shopping. Earlier this month, Amazon announced the start of testing of a new AI shopping agent, a feature it calls “Buy for Me,” with a subset of users.OpenAI, Google, and Perplexity have also showcased similar agents that can visit websites and help users make purchases. OpenAI said Monday that it was updating ChatGPT search, its web search tool in ChatGPT, to give users an improved online shopping experience.