Visa teams up with banks to let AI agents shop and pay on your behalf
Thursday, 30 April 2026
Payments system giant Visa says ANZ, ASB, BNZ and Kiwibank have joined its “Agentic Ready” programme which it expects to lead to a payments revolution in which people and businesses will use AI agents to make transactions for them.
Already people are using AI systems like Copilot, ChatGPT, and Gemini to do consumer research for them, such as generating gift options for loved ones, or finding the best deals on consumer goods.
But people will one day soon be able to ask AI agents to also make the purchases and payments for them.
Visa said its Agentic Ready programme was designed to allow banks to work with Visa to develop agentic commerce that was safe and secure, said David Peacock, country manager for Visa New Zealand.
Read more:
Digital oligarchy: Can US tech giants override NZ sovereignty?
Warning: The ‘too dangerous’ AI knocking on New Zealand’s door
He said the programme would enable banks to test and validate agent‑initiated payments in “controlled, production‑grade environments”.
At Microsoft’s AI Tour sales event in Auckland earlier this month, predictions were made for how people’s dealings with companies like banks and shops would change.
In one presentation at the AI Tour at SkyCity’s International Convention Centre “technologist” Joel Macfarlane from Datacom, which earns its money helping businesses and local government deploy AI, indicated he didn’t think customers wanted to talk to inefficient humans.
Instead, they wanted to talk to businesses’ super-quick AI agents when they wanted to do something like buy a laptop.
Technologists around the world are predicting that people will use agentic AI services to do the shopping, and paying for them, by giving them authority to make payments on their behalf.
Peacock said early agentic experiences had focused on transactions within contained, single-seller environments.
But people wanted to use AI agents to shop with multiple retailers, which required banks and payments systems like Visa to be ready for “agentic commerce at scale”.
“This shift moves payments from a single moment at checkout into a broader automated process, increasing the need for trust, security and consumer control across the ecosystem,” Peacock said.
Programmable commerce at scale required participants like banks to be certain that agent‑initiated payments were clearly linked to real people who had authority to make the payments.
Anna Livesey, general manager for retail products at ANZ, said: “The retail and payments system is evolving fast from cards, to online, and now to AI shopping on your behalf.”
She said: “Customers are exploring how they can use AI to buy, and businesses want to be ready to serve them. That is why ANZ is part of this work, to help customers on both sides of the transaction participate safely and confidently as commerce changes.”
Carl Garrett, general manager for enterprise payments, ASB: “Agentic commerce is an exciting evolution in payments innovation. Taking the hassle out of the entire journey of searching for what you want to buy, choosing, and then purchasing in one secure and seamless flow – transforming the payments experience for consumers.”
Visa’s announcement in New Zealand comes a month after Visa launched a similar programme in Europe.