Visa is finalizing an AI shopping agent. “This is the first implementation of its kind”

Piotr Sobolewski: “We are no longer a company focused solely on payment cards”, “agentic commerce will revolutionize the way people shop”, “cybersecurity is our priority”. Do you agree with these statements?

Mateusz Oleksy, Visa’s country manager for Poland: I absolutely do.

Those quotes, however, come from interviews with your competitor, Mastercard. Why are you saying the same thing?

Because the direction of development in the payments industry is similar. Our companies operate in the same environment, but we pursue different strategies – for example, when it comes to artificial intelligence and cybersecurity.

Visa to ensure AI agent acts on behalf of the customer

Reading about these strategies, one might get the impression that the only things separating you are the name and logo.

It is not just about the name and logo. When we look at the details, more and more differences become apparent. What sets us apart is our approach to building the business. Visa is perceived as an element of security and trust, and cybersecurity is a key area of our operations. Of course, everyone talks about it, but we are genuinely doing a great deal in this field. We not only secure our own infrastructure, but also help customers protect their own systems and networks. We are also expanding our advisory services in the broader areas of cybersecurity and building digital resilience.

The differences are also visible in agentic commerce. We have taken the approach of connecting AI agents, merchants and customers.

Mastercard is doing the same.

It is a competitive market. Visa is focused on building trust across the entire agentic commerce ecosystem and ensuring its secure adoption at scale.

What does that mean?

One of the biggest challenges associated with the development of agentic commerce is trust. If we want artificial intelligence to not only provide recommendations but also make purchases on our behalf, we need to be certain that it is genuinely acting on the customer’s instructions. That is why Visa has developed the Trusted Agent Protocol – a solution that enables the identification and verification of AI agents and confirms that they operate in accordance with the user’s preferences and rules. It is one of the foundations for the development of AI-driven commerce.

Agentic commerce ushers in the fourth era of payments

Don’t you get the impression that AI has become an overused term? Every company has its plans in this area, but there seems to be more talk and announcements than actual implementations.

I often hear people say that AI is today’s “hype”. In my view, that is the wrong comparison. You cannot describe a technology in these terms when it has been adopted so rapidly across so many companies.

If we look at AI from the perspective of payments, we can say that it represents the fourth era of cashless payments. The first was plastic cards, the second was the rise of e-commerce, followed by mobile payments, and agentic payments will be the fourth revolution in how we complete transactions for purchases.

What will change?

It will shift the focus of a transaction away from the payment itself and towards the entire online shopping experience – and the way payments happen in the background. Put simply: we will no longer feel the payment process.

According to the Adyen Index: Retail Report 2025, around 37% of customers today say they use AI for shopping. They are moving away from searching, comparing prices, analyzing specifications and making purchase decisions themselves. The next step is for such transactions to be completed automatically with the help of an AI agent.

The customer will provide the agent with instructions about the product, specify the parameters they are comfortable with, and the agent will make the purchase on their behalf. This will reduce customer involvement, as the agent will handle the entire process.

Visa prepares for its first AI agent deployment

What stage is it at? Is it still in testing? You have just announced the first AI agent transaction involving PKO BP and mBank.

Quite the opposite. In Poland, we are already at the production stage. Together with one of our partners, we have prepared what is known as a use case [a way for a customer to use the solution – ed.]. I cannot reveal who the partner is, but together we designed this solution from the ground up. I believe it is only a matter of weeks before we can present it.

Rather than talking about tests, we prefer to talk about deployments and specific applications. Today, preparing such a transaction with the involvement of an AI agent is not particularly complicated. Why? Because all the building blocks required for it to work are already available on the market. This demonstrates the maturity of the infrastructure, but the key element is having an agent and integrating it into the process. This is exactly what we want to make available in Poland.

This will be the first real production deployment, but we are already working on further ones.

Together with one of our partners, we designed an AI agent from scratch. I believe it is only a matter of weeks before we can present it. This will be the first real production deployment, but we already have more in development.

AI agents are the first step towards changing consumer habits

Will this solution revolutionize the way people shop, or will it simply be another implementation showing that it is possible?

Both. On the one hand, it will be the first real deployment demonstrating that an AI agent can not only advise customers but also guide them through the entire shopping process, including payment. On the other hand, we are looking at this from a much broader perspective.

The history of payments shows that the biggest changes do not happen overnight. That was the case with online shopping, contactless payments and mobile wallets. Initially, they were novelties used by only some consumers; today, they are part of everyday life. The same could happen with AI agents. What we are seeing today is the first step towards changing shopping habits – but it is only the first of many steps that the entire market must take before consumers “vote” with their choices.

That is why we do not see this as a one-off technology experiment. For us, it is the first practical example of what the future of shopping could look like. Adoption will, of course, be gradual, but I am convinced that in a few years, the ability to ask an AI agent to find a flight ticket, book a hotel or put together everyday shopping orders will feel as natural to many people as paying with a phone does today.

The biggest changes do not happen overnight. That was the case with online shopping, contactless payments and mobile wallets. Initially, they were novelties for some users; today, they are part of everyday life. The same could happen with AI agents.

Are companies eager to develop such solutions with Visa?

Companies want this to have a real impact on customers’ lives. We provide solutions and support our partners in building this new ecosystem and establishing the right standards for it.

What exactly are you providing?

We are not building the AI agents themselves. There will be many such agents, created by different companies. Our role is to ensure that these agents can operate safely in the world of commerce and payments.

Today, if I ask an AI assistant to find a flight to Paris or a new laptop, I receive a recommendation. But when it comes time to pay, I still have to visit the website myself, log in and complete the purchase. We want to enable the transition from recommendation to transaction.

To make this possible, three challenges need to be solved. First, how does a merchant know that it is dealing with a genuine agent acting on behalf of a customer rather than a bot impersonating one? Second, how does a bank know that the customer has actually approved such a transaction? And third, how can all of this be done in compliance with European regulations and security standards?

We are providing answers to these three questions. The Trusted Agent Protocol allows merchants to verify the identity of an AI agent. Visa Payment Passkeys confirm that a transaction has been authorized by the right user. And the Visa network connects the agent, merchant and bank within a single process.

The Polish market will move towards e-commerce agents

Where will we see such transactions first: in e-commerce stores or perhaps in large chat platforms such as GPT or Gemini?

There are two approaches. The first involves changing the shopping experience within a company’s own store. In this case, it would bring the type of advice we currently receive, for example, in an electronics store, into the online environment. This is what is known as a closed loop.

The second is an open loop, where we are talking about open chat platforms that become new sales channels for retailers. This will require a different approach to designing e-commerce stores – one that makes them suitable for interaction with agents.

Which direction will grow faster, and why?

I think the Polish market will move towards e-commerce agents rather than open solutions, although the latter will likely emerge as well. Companies today tend to view such agents as a way to optimize the customer journey rather than as new channels for reaching customers with products.

This is probably because, first, the capabilities and operating models of agents are not yet as widely understood as the marketing tools businesses have traditionally used. Creating an entirely new customer acquisition channel would therefore require significantly greater investment.

Second, the golden rule of e-commerce is to move the customer to the payment gateway as quickly and efficiently as possible. Agents will be ideally suited to optimising each step of this journey while keeping the customer within the retailer’s store or marketplace.

AI will also help personalize offers and process data

And if a company is not yet testing such solutions, does that mean it is missing the boat?

It is still too early to put it that way. Everyone is looking very closely at AI. The fact that companies are not yet implementing solutions is because individual deployments still need to scale. There is therefore still time to prepare solutions and integrate them.

Let’s remember that this is not only about payments, but also about using AI to process data, personalize offers and extract additional customer insights to improve the shopping experience.

Will people be ready to hand over control of the shopping process to AI agents?

We are highly innovative. Let’s look at contactless payments – it was also difficult to imagine at the time that they would achieve such widespread adoption. Now we are saying that agentic payments are the next revolution.

Companies will introduce such agents gradually, and like any innovation, they will gain a growing number of users over time. I believe Poland, in particular, will be at the forefront of such solutions because we are highly innovative when it comes to payments.

An AI agent will compare offers better and faster than a human

So, will every retailer provide an agent, and will we use it to tell them what we want and what specifications we need? Will traditional browsing of online stores become a thing of the past?

In my view, most consumers are not dreaming of browsing hundreds of websites. In most cases, they simply want to achieve their goal quickly. If I am looking for a flight or a coffee machine, I do not care about visiting ten different stores. I care about finding the best offer that is most suitable for me.

For the past 25 years, the internet has been built around search. In the future, it will increasingly be based on delegation. Instead of comparing prices ourselves, reading reviews and clicking through multiple pages, we will tell an agent: “Find me the best offer that meets these criteria.” And the agent will do most of the work.

Of course, emotional or inspiration-driven shopping will not disappear. We will still browse clothes, plan holidays and look for ideas. But when it comes to purposeful, repetitive purchases or those requiring the comparison of a large number of offers, an AI agent will simply be more effective and faster than a human.

We are witnessing a change in the way people will shop.

Most consumers are not dreaming of browsing hundreds of websites. They usually just want to achieve their goal quickly. When it comes to purchases requiring the comparison of many offers, an AI agent will be more effective and faster than they are.

Visa is working on further C2P deployments with banks

How will this change the balance of power in the online payments market? Will payment networks regain market share they have lost to players such as BLIK?

Over a period of several years, it will significantly change the distribution of market shares, but this will not happen solely because of agentic AI. In the short term, it will also be driven by the growing adoption of wallets such as Google Pay and Apple Pay, where users can link their cards. This is the most convenient way to pay with a phone, and we can see that people today are primarily shopping on mobile screens.

In addition, we have introduced Click to Pay, which is designed to improve customers’ online shopping experience. It is a global online payment standard intended to make paying on the internet as simple as making a contactless payment in a store. Customers do not need to enter their card number or remember passwords – they confirm payments using biometric authentication or a one-time code and can pay with a single click. We are working on deployments together with Polish banks.

Visa, like Mastercard, likes to emphasize that it is no longer solely a payment card company. There are increasingly more value-added services (VAS). Will these eventually overtake card transaction revenues?

We are diversifying our revenue streams. Value-added services are indeed growing the fastest at Visa. Their growth rate reaches 30% year on year. We offer, among other things, cybersecurity, advisory and marketing services.

We are also making global acquisitions to strengthen these capabilities. We acquired Featurespace, which has strengthened our cybersecurity offering. We also have Tink, which provides open banking solutions. We will continue developing these areas.

The company will open a global technology hub in Poland

Through further acquisitions? Are there also interesting acquisition targets in Europe?

We are investing in the development of our business – both organically and through acquisitions, investments and partnerships. In Europe, we also see potential in solutions and technologies that can deliver additional value to customers, support innovation and accelerate the further development of digital payments.

In fact, we recently announced that we will invest EUR 500 million in Europe over the next decade. A key element of this investment is the creation of a new data center located in the eurozone. Poland’s strong position in the region is underlined by the fact that in March 2027 we will open a new global technology and product hub headquarters here.

You plan to eventually employ 2,500 people there. I am curious whether, beyond establishing the hub here, Poland is mainly executing the agenda set by headquarters in San Francisco, or whether there is room for local initiatives?

There is, of course, a global product agenda, and that has its advantages because our broad international experience allows us to support local companies with solutions they do not have access to on a daily basis. We can share ideas on how businesses are built in other markets.

I would not say that we currently feel constrained in any way. A great deal depends on us. We have significant flexibility here.

Solutions are global, but they come with local adaptations

More specifically: what does the Polish unit develop independently, and what comes from San Francisco?

Solutions such as tokenization, Visa Direct and Click to Pay are global. Our role, in turn, is to provide input to the teams responsible for their development. This allows us to better tailor these solutions to local needs.

We also have an influence on product pricing, including value-added services (VAS). In Poland, we also want to significantly expand our offering for affluent customers. This is a global solution, but we are adding a Polish layer to it. I am referring here to additional benefits.

Like Mastercard’s Priceless Moments program?

No, we take a completely different approach to building loyalty. We are not interested in a broadly available program, because we create customer value in our own way. We prefer to build direct solutions – a good example is our cooperation with ING, where we offer Visa Offers.

Visa aims to address banks’ drive to build customer loyalty

The service is barely visible in the bank’s app. If I had not once browsed through the app out of boredom, I probably would never have found it.

We are a B2B brand. We deliver value for the customer, and in this case the customer is ING. The bank uses our products to create its own solutions.

Moreover, a single opinion is not enough to assess the effectiveness of entire projects. We look at the program’s performance indicators, and they look quite good, although I cannot disclose the details. We are trying to build exclusive offers for ING customers, for example with Modivo – they are available only to customers of this bank.

So, will there be more such partnerships?

Yes, there will be. We are working with Allegro on bringing their deferred payment solutions into the offline world. We also recently announced a partnership with Żabka retail chain, Planet Pay and PKO BP [the partnership concerns a card with a spending limit and the option to defer payments — ed.].

I do not know when we will see the next partnerships, because we do not have influence over everything, but we are working on them. Let’s remember that banks are strongly focused on customer loyalty, and we intend to respond to this need.

Key Takeaways

1. Shopping automation is coming: According to Mateusz Oleksy, Visa’s country manager for Poland, we are entering the fourth era of cashless payments, in which goal-oriented purchases will be delegated to AI agents. Consumers will no longer browse e-commerce stores and approve transactions themselves – artificial intelligence will handle the search, comparison and payment process in the background.
2. Poland has strong potential for AI deployments: Visa has already conducted test transactions involving PKO BP and mBank in Poland. Visa’s head in Poland reveals that within the coming weeks the company will present its first production deployment of an AI agent-powered transaction. He adds that Visa is already working with additional partners on further implementations.
3. New security standards and revenue diversification: Visa’s key role in agentic commerce is to provide the infrastructure needed to verify agents and user identities (Trusted Agent Protocol and Visa Payment Passkeys). At the same time, the company’s fastest-growing segment is value-added services (VAS), which are expanding at a rate of 30% year on year and include cybersecurity and advisory services. The company expects to increase partnerships in the Polish market, including by building loyalty programs for bank customers. It currently cooperates in this area, for example, with ING.