Visa wants to let AI make credit card purchases for you

With artificial intelligence already making its way into every aspect of modern life, Visa now wants to let it assist with a huge area of personal finance: credit card purchases. The company has been experimenting with AI usage for a while, but allowing the technology to make direct purchases represents a significant ramp-up.

What is Visa doing?

Its program, Visa Intelligent Commerce, will enable AI agents to "find, shop and buy for consumers based on their pre-selected preferences," Visa's Chief Product and Strategy Officer Jack Forestell said in a press release. Visa cardholders will be able to "rely on AI to find the perfect sweater, research a new vacation spot or fulfill their grocery list," the company said. Visa is partnering with several AI brands to accomplish this, including Microsoft, OpenAI and Perplexity.

As for the benefits, Visa's "tokenization and authentication APIs will help enable transactions to be secure and seamless, providing confidence for consumers using AI to shop and buy," the company said. Consumers will "share basic Visa spend and purchase insights with their consent to improve agent performance and personalize shopping recommendations." However, cardholders will still have control over spending limits, so the AI will not be able to make extravagant purchases without the user's approval.

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Why is Visa doing this?

The company is "betting that what seems futuristic now could become a convenient alternative to our most mundane shopping tasks in the near future," said The Associated Press. Visa apparently hopes to transform the consumer landscape through AI, with company officials expressing their enthusiasm. This "could be really important," Forestell told the AP. It will be "transformational, on the order of magnitude of the advent of e-commerce itself."

The AI implementation is also part of an effort to "try to shorten the time between consumers selecting a product and making a payment to prevent them from abandoning their purchases midway," said Reuters. Shorter checkout times have "become even more crucial since the Covid-19 pandemic, when many users shifted to online shopping." Visa hopes their program will "reduce friction by letting AI handle routine tasks."

There are still questions as to how this program will be received and what it could mean in the long run. Visa cardholders should "proceed with caution," Ben Winters, the director of AI and data privacy at the Consumer Federation of America, said to NewsNation. It is "not just Visa and Mastercard where you're spending your money, it's not just the grocery store or the Nordstrom that knows they're spending your money — it is that AI company." Employing this service means there will be "multiple entities using that data for their own benefit in ways that you might not even know."

It also "remains to be seen how these AI-credit-card crossovers will work in practice," said Futurism, as there have been reported problems with similar types of AI pilot programs. Users of OpenAI's platform have "complained that it can be excruciatingly slow while performing tasks like buying groceries or ordering takeout." It also must be "constantly babysat, and needs a human to enter passwords and credit card info, and to ultimately approve purchases." However, this is how the program worked prior to Visa's involvement, which could mean the credit card company will implement improvements.