The news: Amazon Web Services (AWS) will enable Visa Intelligence in its marketplace, bringing agentic commerce capabilities to AWS’s merchant list, per a press release.

Why this matters: This deal is a major coup for Visa Intelligence as it vies with rivals like Mastercard Agent Pay to advance its agentic payments platform.

Other payment providers are also locking up deals to make their payment networks and merchants accessible on genAI chatbots. 

• PayPal has locked down an agentic partnership with Mastercard Agent Pay and integrated its buy button into ChatGPT’s chat platform. It also snagged tie-ups with Perplexity and Google. 
•  Splitit debuted its Agentic Commerce Partner Program, and Stripe is working on agentic AI protocols with OpenAI..

While both Mastercard and Visa have scored tie-ups with issuers like US Bank and Citi, Visa’s partnership with AWS is one of the largest partnerships directed toward merchants. Roughly 4.19 million businesses use AWS, per the cloud provider’s 2024 market report, rapidly spreading consumers access to agentic checkout.

Where to go from here: AI adoption is gaining momentum as consumers use platforms like ChatGPT, Anthropic, and Gemini for more functions, especially as a new form of search and product discovery. 

However, US consumers still have trepidation about letting bots complete purchases on their behalf—almost 70% of US adults are uninterested in testing out AI shoppers, per an EMARKETER and Civic Science survey. Major payment players hoping to benefit from agentic-driven volume need to develop incentives or roll out education materials to assure consumers that bot-driven shopping is safe and effective.