Visa Launches Commercial Payment Capabilities and AI Agent Payment Pilots
Visa has announced three new commercial payment capabilities focusing on SESA 2.0 vendor analytics, commercial fraud prevention, and real-time AI agent payment pilots with partners BILL and Billtrust. Additionally, the company projected that global B2B virtual card payment volume will reach $14.6 trillion by 2029. These updates address critical bottlenecks in B2B payment automation by enabling systems and AI agents to securely initiate, authenticate, and control transactions at scale. This development marks a major step toward integrating autonomous AI agents into the global financial infrastructure while mitigating security risks. The AI agent pilot utilizes Visa's Trusted Agent Protocol and tokenized payment credentials to let billing software securely complete invoice payments without sharing login passwords. Meanwhile, Juniper Research estimates that B2B virtual cards will account for 83% of the total global virtual card market by 2029.
## BACKGROUND
B2B virtual cards offer single-use, controlled-limit digital payment methods that streamline corporate accounting and supplier payouts. However, their automated nature creates unique fraud challenges, requiring robust authentication layers like 3-D Secure and pre-transaction controls to verify recipients and prevent unauthorized transfers.