BBVA Completes Its First AI Agent-Initiated Transaction Together with Visa
BBVA has completed a transaction initiated by an artificial intelligence agent on behalf of a cardholder, as part of a live agentic commerce activity that Visa is developing in Europe under its Visa Agentic Ready programme. The payment was carried out using real card credentials and the systems of an active merchant, demonstrating that AI agents can securely complete purchases on behalf of cardholders within today’s payments infrastructure.
The transaction successfully tested by BBVA was enabled through Visa Intelligent Commerce, using the same technologies that support secure digital payments, including tokenisation and real-time fraud monitoring. To support the Strong Customer Authentication (SCA) requirements mandated by the European Union, the transaction also used Visa Payment Passkeys, a biometric authentication method that enables consumers to authorise online payments securely without passwords or SMS codes. This demonstrates that AI agent-initiated transactions can operate within existing regulatory frameworks.
This milestone within Visa’s Agentic Ready programme confirms that agentic payments can function in a real-world purchasing environment while fully maintaining cardholder consent, issuer oversight and compliance with existing protections. Through this initiative, BBVA is contributing to the industry’s understanding of how AI-enabled payments can evolve responsibly, while also exploring how these new experiences can be delivered securely and at scale to cardholders.
“As customer expectations continue to evolve, we are focused on developing new payment experiences that are both seamless and reliable,” said Roberto Pagán, Head of Consumer Payments at BBVA Spain. “Working with Visa through the Agentic Ready programme allows us to participate in the next phase of commerce, where AI agents can initiate transactions on behalf of cardholders using an infrastructure that already delivers scale, security and control.”
“AI agents have demonstrated the ability to initiate transactions in real-world environments, and our role is to ensure that every transaction remains secure, transparent and trusted,” said Eduardo Prieto, Country Manager of Visa in Spain. “By connecting issuers, merchants and AI systems through our network, we are enabling this next phase of commerce using the infrastructure and protections already in place.”
Visa announced this milestone during the Visa Payments Forum in Paris, where demonstrations of real-world AI agent initiated purchases were showcased across sectors including retail and travel services. These agents are increasingly helping consumers search, compare options and make purchasing decisions. According to Visa data1, 62% of surveyed consumers in Spain use it to look for gift ideas, research products and compare prices.
As these tools continue to evolve, agent-initiated payments are expected to expand progressively to new use cases, always operating within clearly defined permissions and controls.
1Spending Shift survey was prepared for Visa by Morning Consult and conducted between October 14th to October 28th, 2025, among a sample of 1,000 adults in each market. The interviews were conducted online and the the data were weighted based on gender, education attainment, age, and income race. Results from the full survey have a margin of error of plus or minus 1 percentage point.