While the industry still has a few agentic commerce hurdles to overcome, Visa’s group president for global markets Oliver Jenkyn believes the move is not too far off.
This, as the next wave of online shopping begins to take shape.
Jenkyn was speaking at a media day ahead of the 2026 Visa Payments Forum in Paris, which kicks-off today for the Central and Eastern Europe, Middle East and Africa region.
Agentic commerce can be described as the next stage in the artificial intelligence (AI)-assisted commercial transaction chain, whereby purchases or commercial actions are initiated, negotiated, or completed by an AI agent on behalf of a user or business, often with minimal human involvement.
Given this evolution, Visa has begun releasing capabilities to support its banking and merchant partners, allowing the agentic experience to take off over the next few years.
Addressing media, Jenkyn said there are eight global payment imperatives that are top of mind for business leaders, highlighting generative AI (GenAI), stablecoins, fraud and security, and trust and brand among some of the notable ones.
He is also of the view that agents will shop on consumers’ behalf in the near- to medium-term.
“We believe that GenAI will have a powerful and positive impact on our industry, like e-commerce and m-commerce before it. Agentic commerce will accelerate the digitisation of the payments around the world,” he stated.
But how agentic commerce will manifest itself is still to play out, such as who will build the agents, what companies on what platforms and the type of transactions that unfold, he stated.
According to the group president, there are three main reasons agentic commerce is still to unfold fully: technology, psychology and business.
“From a technology perspective is that the web was built for humans; it has colours, hues, fonts and pop-ups, all to try and entice consumers to buy things. Bots don’t want any of that, so the error rate right now is very high, if an agent tries to buy in a human way. So, new protocols, new standards and new application programming interface are required to make that happen much more smoothly, and that’s getting worked through by the industry now.
“Secondly is psychology. Humans need to get comfortable with agents shopping on their behalf, and that's going to take a minute. They’re not all just comfortable with this just yet. People must adjust to having an agent shop for them, deciding where to draw the line and what information they are prepared to give to an agent. All of this must evolve over time.
“Finally, there are business terms to work through. If an agent hallucinates and makes an incorrect purchase that neither the buyer nor the seller was expecting, who is going to be held liable? All the rules of business need to get worked through.
“All of these things will get worked through in the near- to medium-term, which will begin to unlock agentic commerce. It [agentic commerce] will fundamentally change how consumers interact and engage in commerce, akin to e-commerce and mobile commerce in years passed. It will be a powerful impact for all of us, if we harness its potential and make the investments now.”
Payments evolution
According to Jenkyn, blockchain and stable coins are also still in the early stages, with lots expected to play out in the space.
“By taking crypto-currency and backing it with fiat currency, you’re translating what was historically a speculative asset class and converting it to something that has potential to be part of the core architecture and infrastructure of the global payments and money ecosystem.”
Data insights indicate stablecoin transactional volumes reached $33 trillion globally in 2025, representing a 70% year-on-year increase.
In addition, digital wallet users are projected to reach 5.2 billion, which will represent 60% of the world’s population.
Visa is looking to be the bridge between the crypto, stablecoin and the fiat currency worlds, Jenkyn noted.
“We’re seeing opportunity in emerging markets where there are volatile currencies and consumers are increasingly using stablecoins as a reliable source of value. We’re seeing opportunities in business-to-business cross-border opportunities, as well as stablecoin-linked cards. We see promise but there’s a lot still to unfold in the space.”
Jenkyn pointed out that cyber fraud and security is usually at the top of the list for senior executives, government officials, fintech firms and venture capitalists.
He added that the “good and bad” guys are fighting on this front every day, and the tools used by the bad guys have turned into weapons.
“There’s now much more sophisticated technology that they can bring to this fight. For example, generative AI is often seen as fun and positive, innovative technology, but the bad guys have access to the same technology for their nefarious goals and they’re wielding it in dangerous ways.”
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