Visa, BILL, and Billtrust launch first live pilot enabling AI agents to complete invoice payments through supplier portals

Visa, BILL, and Billtrust announced the first live pilot enabling trusted AI agents to initiate and complete approved buyer invoice payments end-to-end through supplier portals.

This breakthrough addresses a longstanding challenge in payment automation by eliminating manual authentication requirements that have historically limited automated payment processing.

Mark Nelsen, SVP and Head of Product, Commercial & Money Movement Solutions at Visa, said, “Businesses should not have to choose between automation and control when making payments. This pilot applies agentic commerce to a real B2B-payment problem, by having trusted agents complete payments across platforms.”

“Working with BILL and Billtrust, we are testing how identity, payment controls and transaction visibility can make that model work.”

Overcoming payment automation barriers

Until now, many payment portals required human authentication, creating friction in otherwise automated payment workflows. Through this collaboration with leading accounts payable and receivable solutions providers BILL and Billtrust, the Visa Intelligent Commerce™ portfolio bridges this gap.

Using the Visa Trusted Agent Protocol, AI agents can securely authenticate to credentialed portals. This allows for buyer payments to be completed by trusted AI agents, eliminating the need for manual entry while maintaining supplier control and oversight.

Archana Prasad, SVP of Payments and Financial Services at BILL, said, “Nearly 500,000 businesses trust BILL to move, manage and maximise their money, and that trust depends on removing friction without sacrificing accuracy and security of supplier payments. For too long, supplier portals have been friction points, requiring a person to manually complete what should be an automated step.”

“With Visa and Billtrust, BILL’s AI-powered payments technology is closing that gap: the payment gets done, the supplier gets paid faster, and finance teams get their time back.”

How the AI agent payment process works

The payment flow begins when the authorised BILL Payment Agent, registered using Visa’s Trusted Agent Protocol and Agentic Directory, uses tokenised payment credentials and controls aligned with the buyer’s approved payment instructions to issue payments on behalf of BILL’s customers.

Supported by capabilities within the Visa Intelligent Commerce (VIC) portfolio, this enables BILL to securely automate card payments for supplier invoices.

Once the payment is initiated, Billtrust leverages Visa’s Trusted Agent Protocol to recognise, authenticate, and grant access to the authorised agent, enabling BILL to complete the invoice payment on the customer’s behalf.

This agent authentication replaces traditional CAPTCHA and other bot-blocking methods without needing an extra agent login and allows Billtrust customers to process portal payments quickly, aligning with their acceptance policy and speeding up cash flow.

Building trust into agent-initiated B2B payments

Drawing on capabilities within the Visa Intelligent Commerce portfolio, including Visa’s Trusted Agent Protocol, the pilot enables a recognised, authenticated AI agent to act on behalf of an identified buyer using tokenised payment credentials instead of shared supplier-portal logins.

It also creates a customised payment process for each invoice, ensuring it follows the customer’s approved payment instructions, with full visibility into both authorisation and transaction completion.

Kunal Patel, SVP Payments at Billtrust, said, “Agentic commerce will only move forward if businesses can trust agents to operate across systems with the same clarity and accountability they expect from people.”

“By connecting buyer-side invoice approval with supplier-side payment acceptance, this pilot shows how authorised agents can complete business transactions, releasing trapped cash faster while adhering to a complex acceptance policy and preserving visibility and control for both sides.”

Benefits for buyers and suppliers

For suppliers using Billtrust, the pilot creates a mechanism to recognise and accept payments initiated by trusted business agents, helping release trapped cash while retaining the information needed to process and reconcile payments within their existing payment acceptance policy.

For buyers using BILL, automating this final manual step returns valuable time to finance teams who would otherwise spend hours manually entering information into supplier payment portals.

The pilot is currently live and processing end-to-end transactions with participating buyers using BILL and Billtrust suppliers. As the pilot progresses, Visa, BILL, and Billtrust will continue exploring additional opportunities in agentic payments.