Visa announced the launch of its new global program “Agent Readiness” in the State of Qatar, as part of the regional expansion of the program in the Central and Eastern Europe, Middle East and Africa regions, with the aim of supporting the payments system in the era of e-commerce led by artificial intelligence agents.
In its first phase, the program focuses on enhancing the readiness of issuers by providing a structured path that enables them to test, evaluate and understand transactions executed by artificial intelligence agents within a controlled operational environment close to the actual production environment. The program allows issuers to experience how artificial intelligence agents conduct integrated transactions on behalf of consumers, while assessing their readiness to support this new mode of commerce, ensuring that the levels of trust, controls and protection that underpin the Visa payments network are maintained.
In this context, Fadi Moghaddam, Senior Vice President and Regional Director of Visa Group in the Emirates, Kuwait and Qatar, said: “In the State of Qatar, we are witnessing an accelerated movement towards innovation, matched by a growing awareness of the importance of introducing new payment experiences in a safe and scalable manner. With the growing role of artificial intelligence in the commerce sector, the role of card issuers is emerging as a fundamental pillar in establishing consumer confidence.”
He added: “Visa’s ‘Agent Readiness’ program provides our customers with a practical framework that enables them to understand, test and prepare for payments initiated by artificial intelligence agents, based on an integrated system of security rules, controls and network capabilities that have always formed the basis of the reliability of the Visa payments network.”
The “Agent Readiness” program builds on the core capabilities of the Visa network, combining tokenization, user identities, risk management, and control and oversight mechanisms, with the aim of exploring mechanisms that enhance the reliability of payments and are implemented through artificial intelligence agents in various use cases.
This program is an extension of the Visa Intelligent Commerce system, which is an integrated set of initiatives and solutions that seek to enhance commerce experiences supported by artificial intelligence on a large scale, with high levels of security and reliability.
Implementing commerce through artificial intelligence agents on a large scale requires integrated coordination between various parties in the payments system, and several partners from across the region have already joined Visa’s “Agent Readiness” program, including Qatar International Islamic Bank, Qatar National Bank, and Dukhan Bank, with additional partners expected to join during the current year.
