Visa Taps OpenAI, Pushes Stablecoin Run Rate Past $7B as AI Agents Learn to Swipe 🪪

Visa unveiled an expanded AI commerce and stablecoin settlement strategy at Visa Payments Forum 2026, unveiling a partnership with OpenAI, a new "Agentic Directory" for verifying AI agents and merchants, and broader blockchain-based settlement capabilities. The company framed the push as preparation for what it called the next generation of "intelligent, programmable commerce." AI is transforming the front end of commerce. Stablecoins are reshaping the back end, Visa Chief Product and Strategy Officer Jack Forestell said during the event.

The announcement follows Mastercard's parallel move into agentic commerce infrastructure, underscoring how major card networks are racing to supply the rails for AI-initiated transactions. Visa introduced the Agentic Directory to verify both merchants and AI agents operating in automated commerce flows, allowing each side to confirm the other before a transaction completes. The company also launched "Agent Score," built with New Generation, which grades merchant websites on their readiness for agentic commerce.

Visa's OpenAI partnership will provide payment credentials, security systems, and network infrastructure to support AI-driven transactions inside OpenAI environments, the company said. Visa also demonstrated a proof-of-concept in which AI agents paid for digital services directly from command-line environments using Visa tokenized credentials. The initiatives point to a payments landscape in which software agents act on behalf of consumers and businesses at the point of sale.

On the settlement side, Visa disclosed that stablecoin settlement volume processed through VisaNet has reached an annualized run rate of roughly $7 billion as of March 2026. The company said it is expanding seven-day stablecoin settlement to more banks, acquirers, blockchains, and currencies, and that it plans to support tokenized bank deposits, letting financial institutions issue programmable digital money while keeping the deposits on their balance sheets. Visa added that more than 160 stablecoin-linked card programs are now live or in development globally.