BBVA and Visa completed their first AI agent-initiated transactions as the economy inches closer to an agentic commerce reality. 

The transactions completed by BBVA and Visa pushed  AI agents to initiate purchases in commercial environments, Roberto Pagan, head of consumer payments at BBVA Spain, told FinAi News. 

“This shows that AI agents can act on behalf of consumers while customers remain in control of when, how and under what conditions purchases are authorized.” 

The purchases, which were made during the first two weeks of June, were completed using payment cards that belong to real customers, within previously defined spending parameters, Pagan said. Participating merchants included online retailer Lastminute.com. 

In March, Mastercard, too, executed live, end-to-end agentic payment transactions across Latin America and the Caribbean, according to the card giant. 

According to Cloud Security Alliance’s State of Cloud and AI for Financial Services 2026, 85% of respondents believe AI agents will initiate and execute payments on behalf of customers. The report, conducted this year, surveyed 340 financial services professionals globally.  

Early stage

Just because agentic transactions are possible doesn’t mean the world is ready for agentic commerce. 

“Agentic commerce is at an early stage of development and the industry is still exploring how these experiences should evolve,” Pagan said.  

That means more testing before the tech is released to consumers. 

“The technology alone won’t bring agentic commerce into the mainstream,” Troy Leach, chief strategy officer at Cloud Security Alliance, told FinAi News.  

“Widespread adoption will depend on whether consumers have confidence that the same — or stronger — protections exist when they delegate purchasing decisions to AI agents.”  

Accountability for disputed transactions, unauthorized actions and agent errors must be set, he said.  

“Today’s payment ecosystems were designed around the assumption that a human explicitly authorized every transaction, supported by decades of mature fraud protections and liability frameworks,” Leach said. “Agentic commerce challenges those assumptions.” 

Governance, transparent liability and consumer protections will determine how well agentic commerce is received, he said. 

“Agentic payments are not a future concept — they already exist today as part of digital commerce,” Leach said. “But trust, backed by enforceable protections [guardrails] rather than technical capability alone will be the factor that determines how quickly they achieve broad consumer acceptance.”  

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