Visa $V announced a partnership with OpenAI on Wednesday to embed its payment network inside ChatGPT, allowing AI agents to shop and complete transactions on behalf of users at merchants that accept Visa.
The companies announced the partnership Wednesday in San Francisco, where Visa outlined spending limits and fraud controls for agent-initiated transactions
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Visa $V announced a partnership with OpenAI on Wednesday to embed its payment network inside ChatGPT, allowing AI agents to shop and complete transactions on behalf of users at merchants that accept Visa.
Under the arrangement, ChatGPT users can connect their Visa cards to the platform. The division of responsibilities places OpenAI in charge of enabling agents to browse, evaluate options, and carry out purchases, while Visa manages authorization and monitors transactions for potential fraud. The companies made the announcement at the Visa Payments Forum in San Francisco.
To protect consumers, Visa said the system lets users set boundaries on how the agent spends their money, such as capping expenditures, restricting which types of merchants can be used, and requiring sign-off before certain purchases go through. Visa will use tokenized credentials and real-time authorization to process the payments.
"As AI agents become active participants in the economy, Visa's focus is to ensure transactions are trusted, secure and seamless," said Jack Forestell, chief product and strategy officer at Visa, in a statement.
Marco Mahrus, head of partnerships for commerce at OpenAI, said in a statement that agents will play a growing role in helping people complete tasks involving money, from purchases to more complex transactions.
At the San Francisco forum, Forestell illustrated the technology with a scenario in which a person instructs ChatGPT to track down wireless headphones priced below $150; the AI would then identify an eligible pair and finalize the transaction on its own, according to the Associated Press.
The Visa integration differs from OpenAI's earlier e-commerce effort. Instant Checkout, introduced late last year, turned ChatGPT into something of a digital personal shopper that could hunt for items across the web, but merchant adoption was thin partly because OpenAI levied a 4% fee on each sale. The product was discontinued in March.
Banks and merchants have raised concerns about letting AI make purchases. They worry that agents might spend more than users want, buy the wrong items, or make purchases that customers later dispute. Banks are especially concerned about who would be responsible for fraud if an agent uses a cardholder's account.
Neither company revealed what merchants or consumers would be charged, nor did they share any details about the broader economics of the deal.
Rival network Mastercard $MA has been pursuing a parallel strategy, rolling out tools that enable AI agents to purchase services on a business's behalf.
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