How Visa plans to let the ‘good bots’ shop

This article summarizes an episode of Alex Kantrowitz’s video series featuring Rubail Birwadker, global head of growth at Visa.

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According to Rubail Birwadker, global head of growth at Visa, using AI agents to buy things is much riskier than using them for search. He says the risk isn’t just about wrong information, but about financial security. This area needs new rules for automatic payments.

AI Is the Third Big Change in Online Shopping

Birwadker says what’s happening with AI is the third big change in online shopping, after computers and mobile phones. He observes there is a pattern where each new technology has solved a main problem for shoppers, and each change built on the one before it.

The next step is making things personal
This new period of AI assistants is about having an AI that knows what you want and can buy things for you.

“I think in the agentic era… It’s going to be all about autonomy and personalization,” Birwadker explains, “everything you did, you can now do better with better data payloads, with better personalization… and [based on] what sort of preferences you really have.”

AI assistants will add to, not replace
While the rise of autonomous shopping worries some, Birwadker views AI as a complementary channel that works alongside websites and apps, rather than replacing them.

Birwadker states, “We think with [agentic AI], you’re just going to see another channel that’s going to be very helpful… which doesn’t mean that the existing channels are going to go away. I just think there’s going to be a good amount of migration.”

Building safety checks for agent mistakes

When AI moves into shopping and money is involved, a mistake is a big deal. This creates a need for a safety net around this unpredictable technology.

There’s a world of difference between a wrong fact and a wrong payment
Birwadker states, “Unlike [when you ask AI] ‘When was Joe Pesci born?’—you can get the date wrong. But with money, it has to be right. Every line of code we write, every protocol that we release, just ensures that a student’s paying their fee, a parent is sending money home.”

The industry is preparing for unpredictable behavior
“Are we really going to see [a case] where you ask for a black bag and the agent buys a blue bag? Are we really going to see some hallucination? We don’t know yet, but we’ve added the controls in place to make sure that we can try and reduce it.”

A three-part plan for safe AI shopping

These controls are the base of a new security system. Visa is building a system to make sure agent payments are safe and real.

This plan creates safety rules for everyone involved. It gives sellers and companies a safe payment tool to use, so they can create new things without risk.

• Link a user’s identity to their phone and a specific app.
• Require a biometric authentication to approve a purchase.
• Check that what the user asked for matches what is being bought.

Users will guide the search process

Making the old web work for new agents