This Week in AI: Visa, Mastercard and PayPal Go All in on Agentic Commerce

This week brings fresh news on the digital payments front, with Visa, Mastercard and PayPal unveiling their agentic commerce programs. Their moves represent a significant shift to the payments landscape, fueled by agentic artificial intelligence (AI) systems that can pay on behalf of consumers.

Also this week, a PYMNTS Intelligence report showed that 90% of health care executives are seeing positive ROI for generative AI, which is fueling their GenAI investments for the future. Finally, Apple said it needs more time to upgrade Siri and warned of a Q3 tariff hit.

Visa Launches ‘Visa Intelligent Commerce’

Visa introduced an agentic AI system that would equip AI agents with the ability to pay for purchases and bookings on behalf of consumers, not just shop for them.

Called “Visa Intelligent Commerce,” the program opens the network’s rails to developers building AI agents that search, recommend and make payments using special cards that link back to the user’s original card.

People have been increasingly using AI chatbots to shop and plan for things like vacation travel, according to Visa. But the missing link has been a payment mechanism, until now.

“This is going to transform shopping and buying — we’re letting AI developers and engineers use the Visa network to allow AI agents to find, and buy, on [the consumer’s]  behalf in a seamless and safe way,” Mark Nelsen, Visa’s global head of consumer products, told PYMNTS’ Karen Webster.

Read more: Visa Gives AI Shopping Agents ‘Intelligent Commerce’ Superpowers

Mastercard Introduces ‘Agent Pay’

Mastercard has launched an agentic AI-driven payments program called “Agent Pay.”

The new offering uses Mastercard’s Agentic Tokens, which the company said builds upon tokenization capabilities that power global commerce solutions like mobile contactless payments.

Mastercard is working with Microsoft and IBM on this technology, with other AI leaders to follow. The company will also work with checkout players like Braintree and Checkout.com to enhance tokenization capabilities.

“This helps unlock an agentic commerce future where consumers and businesses can transact with trust, security, and control,” the company said in a news release.

See also: Mastercard Debuts Agent Pay to Promote ‘Agentic Commerce Future’

PayPal Explores Agentic Commerce

PayPal introduced the PayPal Agent Toolkit, which enables developers to integrate its payment processes into the agentic AI workflow.

The company offers a developer toolkit and access tokens that let AI agents interact directly with PayPal’s platform through application programming interfaces (APIs).

“The future is here,” PayPal CEO Alex Chriss said in this week’s earnings call. “Now any business can create agentic experiences that allow customers to pay, track shipments, manage invoices and more, all powered by PayPal and all within an AI client.”

More here: PayPal Details Agentic Commerce Initiatives and Strategic Focus on Value-Added Services

GenAI Use in Healthcare Brings Positive ROI

According to recent research from PYMNTS Intelligence, the healthcare sector is bullish about GenAI, and most have already deployed the technology in key areas like product innovation and customer service. The report polled C-suite executives at healthcare companies generating at least $1 billion in annual revenue.

Companies are both seeing and expecting positive ROI, which fuels future plans for additional investments in the technology. The report also showed that 59% of healthcare executives said they would increase their GenAI investment in the next year, a figure higher than the 52% cross-industry average.

Related: 90% of Healthcare Execs Already See Positive ROI From GenAI Investments

Apple Warns of $900 Million Tariff Hit

Apple CEO Tim Cook is asking consumers to be patient since the company needs “more time” to upgrade Siri up to the standards set by competitors like Amazon’s Alexa and voice-enabled AI chatbots.

“We need more time to complete our work on these features so they meet our high-quality bar,” Cook said during Apple’s earnings call with analysts. “We are making progress, and we look forward to getting these features into customers’ hands.”

Cook also said that Apple expects to see a $900 million increase in costs due to tariffs during its fiscal third quarter, basing that number on current tariff policy.

“We estimate the impact, assuming that the current global tariff rates, policies and applications don’t change for the balance of the quarter, to be $900 million to our cost,” Cook said.

Cook also disputed the rebuke from a federal judge who said this week that Apple was in “willful violation” of a 2021 injunction related to the Epic Games lawsuit.

The court had ordered Apple to let developers find a way to get paid by users without going through the Apple App Store, to avoid Apple’s 30% fee. The judge said Apple then assessed a 27% fee for outside sales.

Cook said Apple disagrees with the ruling and will appeal.

See also: Apple Needs ‘Time’ to Upgrade Siri; Services Revenue Dampened by Cost Hikes