Visa unveils three enhanced capabilities to transform commercial payments through AI and automation

Visa has announced three advanced capabilities focused on commercial card growth, virtual card security, and agentic commerce for commercial payments. These innovations are designed to help financial institutions, fintechs, and businesses automate payment processes while maintaining the trust, visibility, and control essential for future transactions.

Darren Parslow, global head of Visa Commercial Solutions, said, “Businesses are moving quickly to automate the work around payments, from identifying supplier opportunities to approving invoices and executing transactions.”

“These capabilities are designed to help them do that with the data, security and controls they need – whether they are growing commercial card acceptance, helping protect virtual-card payments from fraud, or testing how trusted AI agents can act on their behalf.”

SESA 2.0: AI-driven supplier enablement and spend analytics

Visa introduced SESA 2.0, the next generation of Supplier Enablement Spend Analytics, which leverages AI-driven spend analysis and predictive insights to help clients identify high-potential supplier opportunities.

Building on four years of experience helping financial institutions evaluate supplier payment opportunities, SESA 2.0 combines AI-driven supplier scoring, Visa commercial payments data, buyer benchmarks, and business-value modelling.

The enhanced platform helps organizations prioritize resources, focus enablement efforts, and estimate the economic value of their commercial card programs. Since its launch, SESA has helped financial institutions uncover more than $600 billion in potential cardable spend.

As business payments become increasingly digital, financial institutions require clear visibility into where card acceptance opportunities exist and the information needed to evaluate those opportunities confidently. Enhanced insight into card acceptance enables suppliers and buyers to make more informed decisions while modernising payment flows.

Visa Commercial Fraud Solutions: Strengthening virtual card security

Visa also introduced Visa Commercial Fraud Solutions, a comprehensive suite of tools aimed at enhancing security for commercial virtual card payments and providing more reliable, automated payment experiences.

Juniper Research projects global B2B virtual card payment volume will reach $14.6 trillion by 2029, representing 83% of the global virtual card market. As adoption increases, organisations face increasing pressure to verify suppliers, authenticate users, and ensure payments are executed as intended.

Visa Commercial Fraud Solutions provides protection across three critical stages of a commercial payment.

Visa Commercial Supplier Validation. It helps verify payments are sent to the intended supplier.

Visa Commercial Virtual Authentication. This helps verify commercial virtual card users through 3-D Secure authentication.

Visa Commercial Payment Controls. It enables businesses to set transaction-level controls, including spend limits, merchant category restrictions, location parameters, and timing specifications.

Visa Commercial Payment Controls are currently available in supported countries and territories to eligible issuing financial institutions. Visa Commercial Virtual Authentication and Visa Commercial Supplier Validation are in pilot and will be generally available in 2027.

Agentic Commerce pilot: AI agents complete business payments

Visa, BILL, and Billtrust have launched a live pilot enabling trusted AI agents to initiate and complete approved business invoice payments through supplier portals.

The pilot uses Visa Intelligent Commerce and Visa’s Trusted Agent Protocol to establish the agent’s identity, confirm authorisation, and ensure transactions follow business-defined controls and visibility requirements.

Instead of relying on shared supplier-portal login credentials, the system uses tokenised payment credentials and connects buyer-side invoice approval with supplier-side payment acceptance.

This allows businesses to test automated execution while maintaining visibility into who is acting, what the agent is permitted to do, and which transactions have been approved.

The pilot is currently live and processing end-to-end transactions with participating BILL customers and Billtrust suppliers.

Building a trusted foundation for automated commerce

As business payments become increasingly automated, trust serves as the foundation enabling automation to scale. The future of commercial payments depends not only on transaction speed but also on the ability to identify, authenticate, and govern every participant, credential, and action.

This requires reliable data, trusted identities, and fraud controls designed to ensure approved transactions execute as intended. Visa is investing across the payment process to help businesses maintain confidence in who is acting, what is authorised, and how payments are completed.

By embedding trust into every transaction stage, Visa enables businesses to move from approved decisions to execution with greater speed, security, and control.