Visa Advances the Next Phase of Agent‑Initiated Card Payments in Hong Kong
05/06/2026
• Visa and Bank of China (Hong Kong) successfully completed an AI agent-initiated card payment to advance agentic commerce, preparing Hong Kong’s payments ecosystem for the future of AI‑enabled digital payments.
• Through Visa Intelligent Commerce, Visa demonstrated a safe, transparent and consent-driven end‑to‑end agent‑initiated payment flow, enabling secure, issuer‑approved purchases on behalf of the cardholder.
Visa, a global leader in digital payments, today announced the completion of end-to-end AI agent-initiated card payments with the participation of Bank of China (Hong Kong) (BOCHK) as credit card issuer in testing. This milestone marks a new chapter in Hong Kong’s transition toward agentic commerce—a new generation of AI-enabled payments built on trusted, scalable financial infrastructure. By orchestrating every step from consumer intent and requests through authentication and payment, the use case shows how AI agents can securely support everyday payments on Visa’s network. This initiative reflects Visa’s commitment to preparing the ecosystem to be ready for agentic commerce.
The use case illustrates how an AI agent can act on a cardholder’s instructions to handle real-world purchases at Hong Kong merchants using a BOC Visa credit card over Visa’s global payments network, while maintaining issuer control, consumer consent and strong authentication to ensure increased automation in commerce remains aligned with established standards of trust and governance.
Demonstrating trusted AI-enabled payments with Visa Intelligent Commerce
The recent use case was based on Visa Intelligent Commerce, Visa’s portfolio of initiatives and solutions focused on enabling trusted, AI-driven commerce experiences at scale. It utilises Visa’s secure infrastructure to enable safe, transparent, and consent-driven payments by AI agents. In the demonstration, the AI agent followed a cardholder’s instructions to arrange a business trip – selecting a local souvenir for a friend and organising transport to the Hong Kong International Airport. The AI agent presented suitable options and completed the selected purchases using a BOC Visa card, with clear consent and verified authentication at every step.
This use case highlights how agentic payments can reduce friction for consumers while preserving the safeguards they expect from card-based payments.
“Agentic commerce marks the next evolution of digital payments—where consumers move from discovery to payments through AI agents that understand their preferences and act on their behalf, but greater autonomy and personalisation only work when trust, security and accountability scale with them,” said Paulina Leong, General Manager of Visa Hong Kong and Macau. “Our end‑to‑end agentic card payments with Bank of China (Hong Kong) demonstrate how Visa Intelligent Commerce brings this new channel to life—enabling convenient, real‑world AI‑driven payments while preparing issuers in Hong Kong for the next wave of digital commerce.”
This initiative with BOCHK underscores Hong Kong’s readiness to explore the next generation of commerce models within a well-established financial ecosystem, balancing progress with issuer oversight and consumer protection.
“As AI becomes increasingly embedded in the business ecosystem, innovation must advance in tandem with security and consumer protection,” said Dick Ho, General Manager of BOC Credit Card (International) Limited. “This is particularly important in the financial sector, where convenience and security are like two ends of a scale – only by achieving the right balance can sustainable innovation be driven. Visa’s solutions provide a framework for exploring the feasibility of agentic payments, focusing on enhancing payment intelligence while ensuring transaction transparency and robust customer protection.”
Bringing the potential of AI to everyday life
AI-driven commerce is rapidly moving from concept to reality. Over the past year, AI‑driven traffic to retail websites has surged by more than 4,700%, and 85% of consumers who have used AI to shop say it improved their shopping experience1, highlighting growing consumer openness to AI-assisted purchasing journeys.
This transaction in Hong Kong demonstrates how these trends can translate into practical, everyday scenarios while remaining anchored in strong governance and security standards. As AI agents become embedded into familiar platforms, Visa is preparing the ecosystem so that these agents can transact using Visa credentials at scale, backed by the same protection that underpins Visa’s global network.
Advancing Hong Kong’s AI commerce ecosystem
Building on this milestone, Visa will continue to work with a broad network of major issuers, merchants and technology partners across Hong Kong and the wider region to advance trust-led innovation, strengthening Hong Kong’s position at the forefront of digital payments in the era of intelligent commerce.
1 Generative AI-Powered Shopping Rises with Traffic to U.S. Retail Sites
About Visa
Visa (NYSE: V) is a world leader in digital payments, facilitating transactions between consumers, sellers, financial institutions and government entities across more than 200 countries and territories. Our mission is to connect the world through the most innovative, convenient, reliable and secure payments network, enabling individuals, businesses and economies to thrive. We believe that economies that include everyone everywhere, uplift everyone everywhere and see access as foundational to the future of money movement. Learn more at Visa.com.