Visa has unveiled a suite of enhancements at its Payments Forum 2026, focusing on artificial intelligence, stablecoins, and tokenization. These innovations aim to streamline and automate commerce for financial institutions and merchants. The payments giant is collaborating with OpenAI to embed secure payment capabilities into agentic AI experiences, marking a significant step in merging AI with financial transactions.
Jack Forestell, Visa’s Chief Product and Strategy Officer, highlighted the transformative impact of AI and stablecoins on both the front and back ends of commerce. He emphasized Visa’s commitment to providing secure, reliable infrastructure at a global scale. The new Visa Intelligent Commerce platform empowers AI agents to perform transactions autonomously, complete with controls and connectivity for trusted dealings. Additionally, Visa and New Generation introduced the Agent Score, a tool that evaluates an AI agent’s ability to navigate and complete tasks on merchant websites. An Agentic Directory was also launched to facilitate trust between verified agents and merchants.
Token upgrades are a key component of Visa’s strategy. The company is enhancing its payment tokens to carry richer data and context, including transaction type, token usage, and payment origin. A new token assurance signal uses provisioning and behavioral history to measure trust, helping issuers make better approval decisions and reduce false declines. Visa believes that AI-driven commerce requires stronger identity and permission signals that work across multiple devices and channels.
Visa’s Crypto Labs demonstrated early concepts where AI agents can pay for digital services via a terminal. Forestell noted that an increasing number of transactions will be initiated by developers using AI tools, and Visa aims to ensure that cards function seamlessly in command-line environments.
On the stablecoin front, Visa announced expanded settlement capabilities. The company reported a $7 billion annualized stablecoin settlement run rate as of March 2026, with issuing banks settling onchain seven days a week. Visa is working to extend this capability to acquirers. It is also developing a technology layer for tokenized deposits, enabling banks to create programmable digital money from traditional deposits while keeping funds on their balance sheets. This approach offers stablecoin-like speed without moving funds off the balance sheet. Furthermore, Visa has over 160 stablecoin-linked card programs live or in development globally.
Visa also introduced modular, cloud-native services like Pismo, Unified Checkout, and Visa Intelligent Authorization to help clients modernize their systems. Forestell concluded that while many innovations emerge, only those with trust, security, and global reach achieve lasting scale.