SINGAPORE, March 10, 2026, 23:41 (SGT)
Visa Inc launched a new payment-processing service on March 9, pitching it as a faster way for merchant-facing banks to approve transactions as AI shopping tools and stablecoins add strain to older systems. The company said Visa Intelligent Authorization lets acquirers — the banks and financial firms that process payments for merchants — work across major card networks through one software connection, and uses machine learning to analyze transactions in real time; Visa said the service posted 99.999% uptime and a 96.3% average approval rate in company data for the 12 months through February 2025 that excluded India traffic, while Axel Boye-Moller, its head of value-added services in Asia Pacific, said it was “built for what’s happening now, and what’s coming next.” 1
The timing matters because AI shopping tools are moving closer to the payment step, and Visa has been trying to put its network inside that flow. Reuters reported in April 2025 that the company teamed with Microsoft, OpenAI and others on tools that let AI agents search, book and buy for users, and on March 3 Chief Product and Strategy Officer Jack Forestell told a Morgan Stanley conference that agentic commerce looked like an “enormous growth opportunity.” 2
Stablecoins sit near the center of the plan. In January, Cuy Sheffield, Visa’s head of crypto, told Reuters the company was integrating stablecoins — digital tokens usually pegged to a currency such as the dollar — into existing payment systems to defend market share, though he said merchant acceptance “at scale” was still lacking; Visa’s stablecoin settlement volumes had reached a $4.5 billion annualized run rate, a fraction of the $14.2 trillion it processed last year. 3
On March 3, Visa and Bridge, a Stripe company, said Bridge-enabled stablecoin-linked cards — which let users spend balances held in stablecoins — were live in 18 countries and would expand to more than 100 by year-end. Sheffield said Visa was meeting businesses “where they operate,” while Bridge chief executive Zach Abrams said companies wanted to own more of their “financial stack.” 4
Visa is also trying to secure new payment flows outside banks: Reuters reported on March 10 that Elon Musk said X Money would enter early public access next month, after X partnered with Visa last year to offer direct payment services on the app. 5
The company is making the push from a strong base. Visa beat first-quarter estimates in January as revenue rose to $10.9 billion and payment volume climbed 8% on a constant-dollar basis, while chief executive Ryan McInerney pointed to strength in value-added services, commercial products and money movement; Reuters said Mastercard also posted strong results that day, helped by travel, leisure and everyday spending. 6
But the route is not clean. Stablecoin spending at ordinary merchants remains limited, and regulators are looking for ways to reduce reliance on international card networks. The Bank of England said in February it would consult on giving consumers more ways to pay retailers directly from bank accounts, while the ECB has called Europe’s dependence on networks such as Visa and Mastercard a strategic risk because more than three quarters of regional transactions run through international schemes. 7
Investors were not treating the new tool as a near-term earnings event: Visa shares were down about 0.2% in midday U.S. trade on March 10, while Mastercard fell about 0.5% and American Express slipped about 0.2%.
Visa has been widening its infrastructure footprint in other ways too. On Feb. 19, Reuters reported the company had agreed to buy Argentina’s Prisma and Newpay; Prisma processes more than six billion transactions a year for the country’s leading banks, and Reuters said the deal would link Visa’s global network with a scaled local platform. 8
