Visa sees AI-powered shopping taking off

GLOBAL PAYMENTS technology company Visa expects agentic commerce, or artificial intelligence (AI)-powered automated online shopping, to gain traction in the Philippines once worldwide adoption widens.

“This is one of the exciting innovations and trends that we’re seeing. Our role as Visa is we detect and see how things are progressing and ensure that we enable towards that and prepare for it. So, as and when it happens, definitely it will largely be driven [by adoption] in some parts of the world, and then it comes to us,” Visa Philippines Country Manager Jeffrey F. Navarro said at a media briefing on Thursday.

He added that pilots for agentic e-commerce are already happening in the Americas.

Last year, the company announced that it will be rolling out Visa Intelligent Commerce in Asia-Pacific, which will bring integrated application program interfaces and a commercial partner program to AI platforms. Visa said it was in talks with Ant International, Grab, and Tencent to grow AI commerce.

Mr. Navarro added that Visa will work with regulators to help set industry standards and regulations for the technology.

“So, in the evolution of agentic commerce, where payment is a key component of completing the commerce, Visa also participates in really agreeing on what the standards are so that it becomes very seamless,” he said.

“When it comes to Philippines, and given that this is relatively new, then most likely there will be discussions, and we’re going to talk about it with the central bank as and when we feel that there’s traction already.”

For now, Mr. Navarro said Visa is working to ensure that the country’s payments infrastructure is ready to handle these kinds of new technologies via its clients.

“But I think what’s very important is being ready, and being ready means let’s not wait for it to happen or not. There are things that are very foundational that clients need to do like passkeys or tokenization. Whether that happens or it doesn’t, that needs to happen because that’s the foundation for security and preventing fraud.”

APPLE PAY
Meanwhile, Mr. Navarro said there is strong demand from Philippine banks for the integration of Apple Pay as players await its domestic availability following the launch of Google Pay here last year.

He said Visa is in talks with its clients and is prepared to help them with the possible rollout as demand for contactless payments continues to grow in the country. — A.M.C. Sy