CaixaBank and Visa complete agent-initiated card purchase

CaixaBank and Visa have completed a card transaction initiated by an artificial intelligence agent on behalf of a cardholder, the companies said. The transaction used real card details and standard merchant systems, testing whether agent-led purchasing can operate within existing payments infrastructure rather than through a separate checkout model.

The Spanish lender said the transaction formed part of emerging agentic commerce services in Europe, where AI systems can assist customers in searching, comparing and selecting goods or services. In this case, the agent also began the payment process under a user-defined authorisation and control model.

Visa has been promoting the model through its Agentic Ready programme and its Visa Intelligent Commerce platform. CaixaBank’s participation places the bank among institutions assessing how AI agents can act for customers while retaining issuer controls, cardholder consent and existing payment security checks.

How the transaction worked

The purchase was carried out using merchant systems already in place for card acceptance, according to CaixaBank. That detail is material for banks and payment firms because broad adoption of agent-initiated commerce would depend on whether merchants can support such transactions without rebuilding checkout infrastructure.

Visa Intelligent Commerce relies on technologies used in digital card payments, including tokenisation, identity verification and real-time fraud monitoring, the companies said. Tokenisation replaces sensitive card credentials with a digital token, limiting the exposure of account data during a transaction. Identity checks and fraud tools then help issuers and networks decide whether a payment request should proceed.

Agentic commerce differs from a conventional online purchase because the customer is not necessarily carrying out each step of the transaction manually. The AI agent may gather information, compare alternatives and initiate a purchase according to permissions set by the user. CaixaBank said such models are intended to preserve cardholder consent and issuer oversight.

Visa programme expands in Europe

The CaixaBank transaction follows an announcement at the Visa Payments Forum in Paris, where Visa said AI agents were already starting real transactions on participating merchant websites for cardholders. The activity spans sectors including retail and travel, according to Visa.

The companies did not disclose the merchant, transaction value, product category or cardholder profile. They also did not provide a timeline for wider commercial rollout.

For payment networks and banks, the test points to a possible extension of card-based e-commerce as consumers use AI tools more frequently during the buying process. The immediate issue for the sector is operational: how to give software agents enough authority to complete purchases while maintaining the consent, security and liability frameworks that underpin card payments.

CaixaBank said its work with Visa is designed to support industry learning on AI-powered payments and to align development with customer and regulatory requirements. The collaboration suggests that banks and schemes are seeking to adapt current payment rails to new forms of digital purchasing rather than wait for separate agent-native payment systems to mature.

This story draws on original reporting from Finextra Research.