SAN FRANCISCO—In a sweeping product event coinciding with its second quarter earnings, Visa In𝔉c. unfurled its vision f🍷or the future of commerce, anchored in artificial intelligence and advanced payment technologies. The initiative, dubbed “Visa Intelligent Commerce,” signals not only an expansion of the company’s technological repertoire but also its outlook on evolving consumer behaviors, which CEO Ryan McInerney characterized as “resilient” amid economic turbulence.

Redefining the Shopping Experience: AI Agents Take Center Stage

For years, Visa has harnessed artificial intelligence primarily as a bulwark against fraud, scanning billions of transactions for suspicious activity. Today, the company is broadening AI’s mandate. “We’re now enabling consumers to have more effective and e🌼fficient shopping experiences,” Mr. McInerney told CNBC’s Kate Rooney in an exclusive interview. “W✃hether you’re buying a new set of tennis shoes to run a marathon or a Mother’s Day present, your AI agent will soon be able to shop on your behalf.”

Unlike traditional e-commerce, where consumers peruse endless inventories in search of the right product, Visa’s vision involve꧑s consumer-deployed AI agents—tools developed by leaders like OpenAI, Anthropic, Microsoft, and others which Visa is integrating into its payment rails. These agents can h𝐆unt for deals, select items according to pre-set parameters (such as price ceilings or merchant preferences), and complete transactions on users’ behalf—so long as they are properly authorized, trusted, and authenticated through Visa’s infrastructure.

“We’ve introduced AI-ready Visa credent🍎ials, built on our proven tokenization technology,” Mr. McInerney explained. That tokenization, now encompassing 13 billion tokens globally, binds an individual Visa credential to a specific agent and transaction, providing consumers with granular control—how much their agent can spend, where it can shop, and under what c🍷ircumstances it can act.

The launch, while reminiscent of Mastercard’s anno𝔉uncements this week, reflects a broader trend: advanced, open AI commerce is fast becoming table stakes in the payments industry. “The entire ecosystem needs to embrace this,” McInerney said, citing a need for standards and trust to unlock the promise of agentic comm𝓰erce at global scale.

Taming Complexity with Standards—and Trust

As the payments landscape grows ever more intricate, the risk to consumers rises; an errant or hijacked AI ag꧙ent connected to a credit card account is a tempting target for fraudsters. Visa’s approach is to double down on its core assets: network ubiq𓂃uity and sophisticated security.

“Tokenization means we can tell precisely which a🥂gent you’ve authorized,” the CEO said. Transaction protocols not only ensure a legitimate agent is spending on a user’s behalf, they also offer transparency to issuing banks, 𝕴which view all the relevant data in real time. “With 4.8 billion credentials and acceptance at 150 million merchant locations in over 200 countries, the scale and trust we’ve built are what enable this next wave.”

AI’s Broader Impact: Productivity and the Nature of Work

It is not just the consumer-facing side of Visa’s business undergoing transformation. Acr🙈oss the company, AI is fueling a productivity surge—an effect 🎀echoed by Satya Nadella of Microsoft, who recently asserted that 30% of coding is now handled by AI models. Mr. McInerney confirmed similar figures at Visa, not just in engineering, but in sales, marketing, finance, and HR.

“AI is empowering our teams to be more productive, ship products faster, and serve clients more effectively,” Mr. McInern🌱ey noted. Asked whether this technological leap could result in reduced headcount, he struck a pragmatic tone: “For Visa, it’s about enabling our people to achieve more—not necessarily about cutting jobs, but about accelerating throughput a𒁏nd innovation.”

Stablecoins and Next-Gen Payments: Meeting Global Needs

In parallel to its AI push, Visa announced a deepening of its foray into digital assets, unveiling a partnership with Bridge to deliver stablecoin payments via Visa card🅠s. While the idea of using c🌳ryptocurrencies for everyday purchases has generated more headlines than transaction volume in developed markets, the need is acute elsewhere.

“The biggest product-market fit for stablecoins is outside the U.S.—in countries with high inflation, currency controls, or limited access to dollars,” Mr. McInerney said. For customers in such environments—and for partners ranging from Coinbase to newer c♒rypto exchanges—Visa’s stablecoin account allows users to spend their digital dollars anywhere Visa is accepted. “That’s been a really important product, letting people use funds without thinking about conversion or acceptance.”

The “Resilient” Consumer: Insights from the Visa Network

Perhaps the most striking message from Visa’s latest quarter was the ongoing strength in consumer spending—despite persistent headlines warning of inflation, tariffs, and waning confidence. The company saw overall payment volume grow 8% year-over-year in the latest quartꦏer—9% internationally and 6% in the U.S.—a tre🌜nd that remained steady into late April.

“Wꦯhat we’re seeing, look♏ing across consumer segments and merchant segments globally, is resilient spending,” McInerney emphasized. “Yes, there’s anxiety, and consumer sentiment data reflects that. But when we look at what’s actually happening day in and day out on our network, people are still spending at a steady clip.”

He acknowledged that beneath this steady growth are pockets of divergence: some consumer cohorts and merchant categories show strength while others, such as travel, are softening somewhat from the post-pandemic surge. Still, “discretionary and non-discretionary spending across the boar🌳d remain resilient—no pullback has materialized in aggregate,” McInerney said.

Navigating Uncertainty: Multi-Pronged Growth

The company projects confidence not only because of past performance, but due to the breadth of its business𓆉—spanning consumer payments, value-add♚ed services, and commercial/money movement flows. In lean times, Visa sees opportunity in digitizing cash and account-based payments, and in expanding value-added services that command new revenue streams.

“In recessionary periods, our business is much more diverse than it was a decade ago,” Mr. McInerney said. “We’re present across ge𝓰ographies and customer types, which should help buffer any slower macro environment.”

This convicti♓on was underscored by a $30 billion stock buyback authorization—a move signaling board-level optimism in Visa’s future growth trajectory. “It’s putting our capital to work in service of investors and the company,” McInerney said, adding that robust internal R&D and opportunistic M&A remain on the table as complementary 🧜strategies.

Looking Ahead: Long-Term Bets Amid Turbulence

The future is, of course, rife with unknowns. Visa’s global footprint means it is inexorably tied to tariffs, geopolitics, and shifting consumer sentiment. The comp▨any maintains a regimen of scenario planning but remains focused on medium- and long-term op☂portunities.

On cross-border travel, which was hammered during the pandemic and faces new challenges from ♏geopolitical fragmentation, McInerney projects a return to growth: “Experiences matter deeply, especially to younger generations. Our view is that travel, and the experience economy more broadly, will resume its upward trajectory.”

If there was one aspect of the quarter that suꩲrprised Visa’s chief, it was not negative—it was, again, the tenacity of consumers: “I continue to be encouraged by the resilience we’re seeing, in the U.S. and globally, despite the noise and uncertainty.”

As Visa steers into a new era of AI-powered commerce and diverse payment flows, it must balance innovation with trust—always aware of the undercurrents running through the global economy. For now, both the network, and the cons𝔉umers it serves, remain firmly꧟ in motion.