San Francisco (USA), May 1 (EFE).- Visa is entering a new era in digital commerce with the launch of a platform aimed at streamlining the payment and purchase system through an alliance with artificial intelligence (AI) giants.
“As new forms of payment emerge, you need to operate on a network that is always on, always reliable, and constantly innovating,” said Visa CEO Ryan McInerney at its annual Visa Payments Forum where the U.S. company unveiled its latest developments.
This year’s star announcement is Visa Intelligent Commerce, a payments network that will act “to facilitate commerce based on artificial intelligence,” Romina Seltzer, head of Visa Latin America and Caribbean Product and Innovation, told EFE.
“There is no commerce without payment, so, based on that premise, we are working with agents who are key players in this space to facilitate payments in a context of agent commerce that are secure, frictionless and with the trust that characterizes Visa products,” she added.
Increased security and reduced risk of fraud
In partnership with companies such as Microsoft, OpenAI, IMB, and Perplexity, the innovative technology will facilitate payment automation and plans to reduce purchase and card payment transaction time.
“For AI-enabled cards, we offer two functions: tokenization and authentication. These two services have been the pillars of our digital commerce strategy for the last decade, and we are modifying and adapting them to the traditional agent-driven world,” Visa Product and Strategy Officer Jack Forestell said at the event.
The token, in this sense, “replaces the 16-digit card number with a unique 16-digit cryptographically protected code,” which will protect the user’s authorization for transactions and reduce purchase fraud attempts, he explained.
“Each Visa token provided in an agent environment will be locked by default and activated only when the user tells the agent what they want it to do. In short, nothing happens without permission” from the consumer, he added.
These initiatives aim to “provide security and transparency to what will be commerce through artificial intelligence agents,” Visa Regional President for Latin America and the Caribbean, Eduardo Coello told EFE.
To ensure this, “we need the tools for a consumer to feel secure that their information is well protected, and also a merchant to know that the people who are making the purchase are really who they say they are,” he said.
Stable digital currencies in Latin America
Another of the innovations Visa presented at the forum is the issuance of credentials related to stablecoins “both to buy and to be able to use them,” said Seltzer.
Through a collaboration with the Bridge platform, holders of these cards will be able to make daily purchases with the balance linked to their stablecoins at any establishment that accepts Visa.
“The way we see it is to facilitate in a way the conditions for the development of the next wave of digital commerce,” added Seltzer.
Technologies in Latin America “have allowed us to accelerate the penetration of electronic payments. Even before the pandemic, more than half of consumer transactions were made, on average in the region, with cash, and cash does not coexist in this world of e-commerce,” said Coello. EFE
Visa has collaborated with EFE in the dissemination of this content.