The news: Visa will enable payments on ChatGPT through its global card network and credentialing through an extension of Visa Intelligence Commerce, per a press release. 

Visa also launched Agentic Directory to help merchants verify which agents can be trusted to complete transactions and help agents verify real merchants over dupe storefronts.

How we got here: ChatGPT has struggled to find the right formula for AI commerce.

• ChatGPT launched Instant Checkout powered by Stripe last September.
• But after a tepid reception, ChatGPT walked back Instant Checkout, instead pushing checkout into third-party apps that plug into the platform. 

Why this matters: Visa’s tie-up with ChatGPT pairs the biggest US card networks with the most used AI platform in the US. We forecast that ChatGPT will net 114.5 million users this year, per our forecast. 

This strengthens ChatGPT’s effort to get AI and agent-driven commerce off the ground with Visa’s vast acceptance and Intelligence Commerce Connect. 

Implications for payment providers: While true agentic commerce is largely unavailable to consumers, AI platform-driven commerce—the first step—is slowly building momentum. We forecast that US ecommerce sales via AI platforms will eclipse $20 billion this year and will climb to $144 billion within three years.

AI-mediated discovery is a particularly resonant tool among consumers: 83% of shoppers in the US, Asia-Pacific, Europe, the Middle East, and Africa said they’ve used an AI-powered tool while shopping in the last six months, per a November 2025 Bazaarvoice survey. Payment providers need to get their merchants visible in those chatbot queries through product protocols like Klarna’s—even if the in-chat transactions haven’t materialized.