Visa has enabled live agentic commerce transactions across Europe, letting AI agents complete purchases with participating merchants.
The transactions mark a shift from testing within controlled environments to live purchases at participating merchant websites, with agents browsing products, selecting items and initiating payments within parameters set by consumers.
In addition, the transactions are enabled through Visa Intelligent Commerce, Visa's portfolio of initiatives supporting AI-driven commerce. They rely on explicit consumer authorisation, with agents operating within user-defined controls rather than acting independently of the cardholder's instructions. Visa has worked with more than 30 European card issuers to support these transactions, alongside merchants including lastminute.com, Frasers, Cleverbridge and BrickDepot, spanning the travel, retail and ecommerce sectors.
The initiative forms part of Visa's Agentic Ready programme, which the company describes as bringing together infrastructure, standards and partners to support agentic commerce across European markets. Visa has compared the approach to the model it used to scale contactless payments, aiming to establish trust in the system ahead of broader rollout.
Merchant participation has been facilitated through Visa's Trusted Agent Protocol (TAP) and its Agent Directory, designed to let merchants recognise and interact with verified AI agents across platforms. These tools give merchants a way to distinguish authenticated agent traffic from other website activity, while retaining control over how agents access product listings and complete purchases.
Furthermore, Visa has stated that TAP does not require merchants to adopt new infrastructure and is designed to operate alongside existing and emerging commerce protocols. Implementation support is provided by infrastructure providers, including Cloudflare and Akamai, which integrate the protocol into the systems underpinning merchant websites.
Authentication through Visa Payment Passkeys
On the issuing side, participation is supported through Visa Payment Passkeys, which authenticate transactions initiated by AI agents on behalf of consumers. Each transaction is linked to a verified user and their specific instruction, a mechanism Visa states keeps consumers in control of when and how payments are made. All transactions completed under the Agentic Ready programme have used Visa Payment Passkeys, which Visa says supports issuers' compliance with the EU's Strong Customer Authentication requirements.
Issuing banks that have completed live, agent-executed transactions include Barclays, BBVA, CaixaBank, Commerzbank, HSBC UK, ING, Klarna, Lloyds Banking Group, NatWest, Nordea Bank, Revolut and Deutsche Kreditbank, among others.
Wider implications for the payments ecosystem
Visa has said the model underpinning these transactions is also being extended to commercial and B2B payment scenarios, where agent-initiated transactions could apply to business purchasing processes. The company has positioned the live transactions as a step towards wider adoption of agentic commerce across sectors and markets in Europe, contingent on continued cooperation between issuers, merchants and infrastructure providers.
