Visa and Anthropic demonstrated a joint pilot this week in which AI agents autonomously browsed e-commerce sites, compared prices across vendors, and completed purchases using Visa tokenized payment credentials — with no human intervention beyond the initial instruction and spending parameters.
The pilot, running across 12 participating merchants, showed AI agents completing complex multi-step purchases (comparing specifications, checking inventory, applying coupons, selecting shipping) in an average of 47 seconds versus 8-12 minutes for a human shopper.