BBVA has completed a transaction initiated by an artificial intelligence agent on behalf of a cardholder, as part of a live agentic commerce activity that Visa is developing in Europe under its Visa Agentic Ready program.

The payment was carried out using real card credentials and the systems of an active merchant, demonstrating that AI agents can securely complete purchases on behalf of cardholders within today’s payments infrastructure.

The transaction successfully tested by BBVA was enabled through Visa Intelligent Commerce, using the same technologies that support secure digital payments, including tokenisation and real-time fraud monitoring.

To support the Strong Customer Authentication (SCA) requirements mandated by the European Union, the transaction also used Visa Payment Passkeys, a biometric authentication method that enables consumers to authorise online payments securely without passwords or SMS codes. This demonstrates that AI agent-initiated transactions can operate within existing regulatory frameworks.

This milestone within Visa’s Agentic Ready programme confirms that agentic payments can function in a real-world purchasing environment while fully maintaining cardholder consent, issuer oversight and compliance with existing protections. Through this initiative, BBVA is contributing to the industry’s understanding of how AI-enabled payments can evolve responsibly, while also exploring how these new experiences can be delivered securely and at scale to cardholders.

“As customer expectations continue to evolve, we are focused on developing new payment experiences that are both seamless and reliable,” said Roberto Pagán, Head of Consumer Payments at BBVA Spain. “Working with Visa through the Agentic Ready programme allows us to participate in the next phase of commerce, where AI agents can initiate transactions on behalf of cardholders using an infrastructure that already delivers scale, security and control.”

“AI agents have demonstrated the ability to initiate transactions in real-world environments, and our role is to ensure that every transaction remains secure, transparent and trusted,” said Eduardo Prieto, Country Manager of Visa in Spain. “By connecting issuers, merchants and AI systems through our network, we are enabling this next phase of commerce using the infrastructure and protections already in place.”