Visa outlines AI, token, and Stablecoin capabilities shaping the future of commerce
Visa, on June 30, outlined a comprehensive vision for the future of commerce, emphasizing the transformative roles of artificial intelligence, tokenization, and stablecoin technology. Speaking ahead of the Visa Payments Forum in Paris, Tareq Muhmood, Regional President for the Central and Eastern Europe, Middle East, and Africa (CEMEA), described a commerce landscape rapidly evolving toward intelligent, programmable, and seamlessly integrated experiences.
The company’s strategy addresses both the front end of consumer interaction and the back end of financial infrastructure. On the consumer-facing side, Visa is preparing for a world where artificial intelligence agents routinely initiate and complete transactions on behalf of users. To ensure these interactions remain secure and trustworthy, Visa has launched two complementary initiatives. The Agent Score, developed in partnership with New Generation, provides merchants with a diagnostic tool to evaluate their websites’ readiness to accommodate AI-driven commerce — assessing whether agents can navigate, comprehend, and successfully complete transactions. Simultaneously, the Agentic Directory establishes a verified ecosystem of merchants and AI agents that have met stringent legitimacy criteria, fostering confidence in automated exchanges.
These developments respond to a significant shift in payment behavior within the CEMEA region. Tokenization, already a cornerstone of secure digital payments, has seen accelerated adoption, with tokenized transactions growing from 26% of the total in 2023 to 70% in 2026. Visa is enhancing this foundation by enriching token metadata to include contextual details such as transaction type, merchant category, and user identity. Furthermore, the introduction of a token assurance signal — derived from provisioning history and behavioral patterns — aims to establish a dynamic trust score for each token throughout its lifecycle. Together, these measures seek to strengthen the reliability of tokens as they underpin increasingly automated and embedded commerce experiences.
On the settlement side, Visa is leveraging blockchain technology to modernize the movement of value. Through Tokenised Deposits, the company is developing infrastructure that would enable banks to transform traditional deposits into programmable, blockchain-based digital assets while retaining them on their balance sheets. This approach aims to combine the stability of bank deposits with the flexibility and speed associated with stablecoins. Complementing this, Visa has expanded its stablecoin settlement pilots across multiple regions, blockchains, and fiat currencies. Building on initial efforts in early 2025, the company reported processing an annualized volume of approximately $7 billion in stablecoins via VisaNet as of March 2026 — a figure representing nearly a sixtyfold increase since the launch of stablecoin settlement services in CEMEA a year prior. To ensure widespread usability, Visa is also growing its network of stablecoin-linked card programs, which now surpass 160 globally, allowing consumers to utilize stablecoin balances at any Visa-accepting merchant.
Anticipating the evolving needs of travelers, Visa is introducing an AI-driven travel intelligence tool tailored for the CEMEA market. Visa Trip Intelligence synthesizes internal transaction data from VisaNet with external sources such as flight schedules and hotel booking trends to infer travel intent well before a purchase occurs. The service can generate personalized trip itineraries and provide actionable insights, enabling banks to offer pre-travel assistance, reduce payment-related friction, and deliver more relevant benefits and services to customers during their journeys.
These initiatives reflect Visa’s broader conviction that the future of commerce depends on robust infrastructure that balances innovation with trust and interoperability. As Muhmood noted, serving the digital economy requires not only technological advancement but also the confidence that transactions remain secure and seamless. By investing in AI-enabled commerce tools, enriched tokenization standards, and blockchain-based settlement solutions, Visa aims to equip financial institutions and businesses across the CEMEA region to participate confidently in the next generation of economic activity. The success of these efforts will hinge on widespread industry collaboration and regulatory clarity, particularly as novel forms of digital value continue to challenge traditional financial paradigms.
Image Source: GHANAMMA
