Visa is expanding its Visa Intelligent Commerce platform across Asia Pacific and preparing an AI commerce pilot by early 2026, as the payments giant doubles down on AI agents, QR payments and stablecoin settlement in the region.
The company announced the regional push for Visa Intelligent Commerce on Wednesday (Nov 12), calling it a key step towards “agentic commerce” – where artificial intelligence (AI) agents can shop and pay on behalf of consumers using Visa credentials at millions of merchants worldwide.
AI agents move closer to checkout
Visa Intelligent Commerce is described as a suite of integrated application programming interfaces (APIs) and a partner programme that uses Visa’s existing payments infrastructure to support safe, transparent and consent-driven payments initiated by AI agents. It brings together tokenisation, authentication, payment instructions and transaction signals so that AI agents can operate with clear consumer consent and traceability.
As part of the rollout, Visa has introduced Trusted Agent Protocol, an “ecosystem-led framework” designed to let merchants recognise and verify trusted AI agents, using agent-specific cryptographic signatures to distinguish legitimate agents from malicious bots and preserve visibility of the consumer behind the agent.
The company is working with technology and payment players including Ant International, LG Uplus, Microsoft, Perplexity, Stripe and Tencent to enable these agentic commerce transactions in Asia Pacific. Visa expects Visa Intelligent Commerce pilots to go live across the region by early 2026, subject to regulatory and ecosystem readiness.
T.R. Ramachandran, Visa’s Head of Products and Solutions for Asia Pacific, said the rise of agentic commerce requires a “unified ecosystem” to unlock its potential, adding that Visa Intelligent Commerce and Trusted Agent Protocol aim to connect consumers, AI agents and merchants through secure, scalable solutions.
QR and stablecoins extend Visa’s APAC reach
Alongside Visa Intelligent Commerce, Visa has switched on Visa Scan to Pay, a QR payments solution that lets millions of merchants across Asia Pacific accept Visa payments via widely used digital wallets and payment apps.
Powered by partnerships with bank apps and wallets such as Samsung Wallet (in eight Asia Pacific markets), LINE Pay in Taiwan, VNPT Money in Vietnam, and card issuers in Korea, Visa Scan to Pay allows consumers to tap, scan or pay online using their preferred wallet while travelling or shopping at home.
The service runs on top of Visa Pay, a broader service that connects participating digital wallets to Visa-accepting merchants globally across in-store and online channels. For merchants, Visa says Scan to Pay can expand acceptance to international visitors, use existing QR infrastructure to lower processing costs and simplify operations, and support business growth through access to Visa’s global network.
In another Asia-focused move, Singapore-headquartered fintech Nium will join Visa’s stablecoin settlement pilot, enabling it to settle obligations with Visa in selected stablecoins, including Circle’s USDC, across supported blockchains.
Nium plans to use stablecoins as a digital settlement rail with Visa to reduce friction, cost and delays in cross-border settlement, including issues such as weekend cut-offs and time zone differences. Visa says the pilot is designed to offer partners more predictable settlement capabilities up to seven days a week.
Visa is showcasing Visa Intelligent Commerce, Visa Scan to Pay and the Visa Pay experience at the Singapore FinTech Festival 2025, which runs from 12 to 14 November. The company says it will continue to work with regulators and ecosystem partners as it prepares Visa Intelligent Commerce pilots in Asia Pacific by early 2026 and expands stablecoin settlement capabilities to more participants in its network.
