Visa Announces New Era of Commerce Featuring AI
The future of commerce is on display at the Visa Global Product Drop with powerful AI-enabled advancements allowing consumers to find and buy with AI plus the introduction of new strategic partnerships and product innovations.
'As new ways to pay emerge, they need to run on a network that is always on – that is safe, secure, scalable and relentlessly innovating,' said Visa CEO Ryan McInerney. 'We are taking the power of our network and our decades-long expertise to bring new products and solutions that will transform commerce and bring trust and security to AI-enabled payments.'
Product Roadmap
Visa kicked off its Global Product Drop by sharing how the combination of AI and digital commerce will mark a significant shift in the way consumers discover and buy products and services. In the near future, consumers will enable AI agents to browse, select, purchase and manage on their behalf. For this to be possible, agents will need to be trusted with payments, not only by users, but by banks and sellers as well. Visa will bring this trust to AI commerce by providing a simple way for our partners – AI platforms, tech players, banks, fintechs, merchants and more – to access the Visa network. This is the next step in Visa's journey to connect even more buyers and sellers through seamless, secure digital payments.
Headlining the announcement, the company introduced Visa Intelligent Commerce , a groundbreaking initiative that opens Visa's payments network to developers and engineers building the first generation of true AI commerce. Visa also announced new stablecoin partnerships to reach more people and geographies. Finally, Visa shared the expansion of its Flex Credential platform, and new products and services that provide more ways for people to pay and get paid.
The advancements introduced today will enable the next wave of commerce and money movement.
Visa Intelligent Commerce: A New Era
In the last 25 years, Visa's network has processed 3.3 trillion transactions. Visa will extend the infrastructure, standards and capabilities present in physical and digital commerce today to AI commerce. Soon consumers will enable AI agents via AI platforms to use a Visa credential (of which there are 4.8 billion today) at any accepting merchant location (currently totaling over 150 million) for any payment use case.
'Historically, Visa has used AI to protect consumers, harnessing it to help combat fraud. Now, we will also enable AI to empower consumers, fundamentally shifting digital commerce to make it more personal, more relevant and more delightful,' added McInerney. 'For any AI commerce use case to take hold, the payment is a critical enabler of success. If there is no payment, there is no commerce. That's the expertise and trust that Visa brings.'
To move the needle on AI commerce at the speed and scale required, the company is collaborating with the AI platforms and brands that consumers and merchants are choosing to work with every day, including Anthropic, IBM, Microsoft, Mistral AI, OpenAI, Perplexity, Stripe and Samsung.
'We see tremendous potential for the role AI agents will play in commerce, from streamlining 'regular' transaction-driven tasks such as ordering groceries, to more sophisticated search and decision-making like securing that hard-to-get restaurant reservation or concert ticket,' said Jack Forestell, Visa's Chief Product and Strategy Officer. 'This will be a transformative change, bringing more magic and convenience to the consumer experience and creating a new world that will forever change how we shop and buy.'
New Products, Advancements and Capabilities
Visa continues to invest in new features and capabilities that help extend the reach of its network and provide secure and seamless payment experiences.
Stablecoins: For over half a decade, Visa has been facilitating crypto transactions and is now further expanding the applications for stablecoins with stablecoin-linked cards, settlement and programmable money. Bridge, a Stripe company, is working with Visa on a new card product that enables fintech developers to offer stablecoin-linked Visa cards to their end customers in multiple countries through a single API integration.
Flex Credential Expansion: Last year, Visa reinvented the card with the introduction of the Flex Credential, a next generation card that can seamlessly toggle between different payment methods (debit, credit, buy now, pay later). Today, millions of people around the world are using the Flex Credential and Visa plans to roll out new use cases like expanding access to lines of credit, investment accounts, rewards, commercial cards and more.
Unveiled today, Visa and Klarna are partnering to bring the Flex Credential to the U.S. and will be the first in Europe to offer a debit-to-buy now pay later use case that gives consumers more flexibility in how they pay. More details will be announced later this year.
Introducing More Ways to Pay and Get Paid: Visa is also announcing more ways for consumers, merchants and partners to pay and get paid around the world.
• Visa Pay is a new service designed to connect any participating wallet to any Visa-accepting merchant, local or international, in-store or online. Visa Pay is set for beta release in select markets in Asia, Europe and Latin America.
• Visa Accept is a new offering to give micro-sellers a 'way to get paid' to their eligible Visa debit card, from any NFC-capable smartphone with just a few clicks, providing access to billions of credentials with just one card in your pocket. Visa Accept is being released for Visa beta partners in July, with the first activations in Latin America and Asia.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Egypt Independent
3 days ago
- Egypt Independent
Why this leading AI CEO is warning the tech could cause mass unemployment
New York CNN — The chief executive of one of the world's leading artificial intelligence labs is warning that the technology could cause a dramatic spike in unemployment in the very near future. He says policymakers and corporate leaders aren't ready for it. 'AI is starting to get better than humans at almost all intellectual tasks, and we're going to collectively, as a society, grapple with it,' Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei told CNN's Anderson Cooper in an interview on Thursday. 'AI is going to get better at what everyone does, including what I do, including what other CEOs do.' Amodei believes the AI tools that Anthropic and other companies are racing to build could eliminate half of entry-level, white-collar jobs and spike unemployment to as much as 20 percent in the next one to five years, he told Axios on Wednesday. That could mean the US unemployment rate growing fivefold in just a few years; the last time it neared that rate was briefly at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic. It's not the first dire warning about how rapidly advancing AI could upend the economy in the coming years. Academics and economists have also cautioned that AI could replace some jobs or tasks in the coming years, with varying degrees of seriousness. Earlier this year, a World Economic Forum survey showed that 41 percent of employers plan to downsize their workforce because of AI automation by 2030. But Amodei's prediction is notable because it's coming from one of the industry's top leaders and because of the scale of disruption it foretells. It also comes as Anthropic is now selling AI technology on the promise that it can work nearly the length of a typical human workday. The historical narrative about how tech advancement works is that technology would automate lower-paying, lower-skilled jobs, and the displaced human workers can be trained to take more lucrative positions. However, if Amodei is correct, AI could wipe out more specialized white-collar roles that may have required years of expensive training and education — and those workers may not be so easily retrained for equal or higher-paying jobs. Amodei suggested that lawmakers may even need to consider levying a tax on AI companies. 'If AI creates huge total wealth, a lot of that will, by default, go to the AI companies and less to ordinary people,' he said. 'So, you know, it's definitely not in my economic interest to say that, but I think this is something we should consider and I think it shouldn't be a partisan thing.' 'Faster, broader, harder to adapt to' Researchers and economists have forecast that professionals from paralegals and payroll clerks to financial advisers and coders could see their jobs dramatically change – if not eliminated entirely – in the coming years thanks to AI. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said last month that he expects AI to write half the company's code within the next year; Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said as much as 30 percent of his company's code is currently being written by AI. Amodei told CNN that Anthropic tracks how many people say they use its AI models to augment human jobs versus to entirely automate human jobs. Currently, he said, it's about 60 percent of people using AI for augmentation and 40 percent for automation, but that the latter is growing. Last week, the company released a new AI model that it says can work independently for almost seven hours in a row, taking on more complex tasks with less human oversight. Amodei says most people don't realize just how quickly AI is advancing, but he advises 'ordinary citizens' to 'learn to use AI.' 'People have adapted to past technological changes,' Amodei said. 'But everyone I've talked to has said this technological change looks different, it looks faster, it looks harder to adapt to, it's broader. The pace of progress keeps catching people off guard.' Estimates about just how quickly AI models are improving vary widely. And some skeptics have predicted that as big AI companies run out of high-quality, publicly available data to train their models on, after having already gobbled up much of the internet, the rate of change in the industry may slow. Some who study the technology also say it's more likely that AI will automate certain tasks, rather than entire jobs, giving human workers more time to do complex tasks that computers aren't good at yet. But regardless of where they fall on the prediction scale, most experts agree that it is time for the world to start planning for the economic impacts of AI. 'People sometimes comfort themselves (by) saying, 'Oh, but the economy always creates new jobs,'' University of Virginia business and economics professor Anton Korinek said in an email. 'That's true historically, but unlike in the past, intelligent machines will be able to do the new jobs as well, and probably learn them faster than us humans.' Amodei said he also believes that AI will have positive impacts, such as curing disease. 'I wouldn't be building this technology if I didn't think that it could make the world better,' he said. For the CEO, making this warning now could serve, in some ways, to boost his reputation as a responsible leader in the space. The top AI labs are competing not only to have the most powerful models, but also be perceived as the most trustworthy stewards of the tech transformation, amid growing questions from lawmakers and the public about the technology's efficacy and implications. 'Amodei's message is not just about warning the public. It's part truth-telling, part reputation management, part market positioning, and part policy influence,' tech futurist and Futuremade CEO Tracey Follows told CNN in an email. 'If he makes the claim that this will cause 20 percent unemployment over the next five years, and no-one stops or impedes the ongoing development of this model … then Anthropic cannot be to blame in the future — they warned people.' Amodei told Cooper that he's 'raising the alarm' because other AI leaders 'haven't as much and I think someone needs to say it and to be clear.' 'I don't think we can stop this bus,' Amodei said. 'From the position that I'm in, I can maybe hope to do a little to steer the technology in a direction where we become aware of the harms, we address the harms, and we're still able to achieve the benefits.'
Mid East Info
22-05-2025
- Mid East Info
Red Hat Optimizes Red Hat AI to Speed Enterprise AI Deployments Across Models, AI Accelerators and Clouds - Middle East Business News and Information
Red Hat AI Inference Server, validated models and integration of Llama Stack and Model Context Protocol help users deliver higher-performing, more consistent AI applications and agents Red Hat, the world's leading provider of open source solutions, today continues to deliver customer choice in enterprise AI with the introduction of Red Hat AI Inference Server, Red Hat AI third-party validated models and the integration of Llama Stack and Model Context Protocol (MCP) APIs, along with significant updates across the Red Hat AI portfolio. With these developments, Red Hat intends to further advance the capabilities organizations need to accelerate AI adoption while providing greater customer choice and confidence in generative AI (gen AI) production deployments across the hybrid cloud. According to Forrester, open source software will be the spark for accelerating enterprise AI efforts.1 As the AI landscape grows more complex and dynamic, Red Hat AI Inference Server and third party validated models provide efficient model inference and a tested collection of AI models optimized for performance on the Red Hat AI platform. Coupled with the integration of new APIs for gen AI agent development, including Llama Stack and MCP, Red Hat is working to tackle deployment complexity, empowering IT leaders, data scientists and developers to accelerate AI initiatives with greater control and efficiency. Efficient inference across the hybrid cloud with Red Hat AI Inference Server: The Red Hat AI portfolio now includes the new Red Hat AI Inference Server, providing faster, more consistent and cost-effective inference at scale across hybrid cloud environments. This key addition is integrated into the latest releases of Red Hat OpenShift AI and Red Hat Enterprise Linux AI, and is also available as a standalone offering, enabling organizations to deploy intelligent applications with greater efficiency, flexibility and performance. Tested and optimized models with Red Hat AI third party validated models Red Hat AI third party validated models, available on Hugging Face, make it easier for enterprises to find the right models for their specific needs. Red Hat AI offers a collection of validated models, as well as deployment guidance to enhance customer confidence in model performance and outcome reproducibility. Select models are also optimized by Red Hat, leveraging model compression techniques to reduce size and increase inference speed, helping to minimize resource consumption and operating costs. Additionally, the ongoing model validation process helps Red Hat AI customers continue to stay at the forefront of optimized gen AI innovation. Standardized APIs for AI application and agent development with Llama Stack and MCP Red Hat AI is integrating Llama Stack, initially developed by Meta, along with Anthropic's MCP, to provide users with standardized APIs for building and deploying AI applications and agents. Currently available in developer preview in Red Hat AI, Llama Stack provides a unified API to access inference with vLLM, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), model evaluation, guardrails and agents, across any gen AI model. MCP enables models to integrate with external tools by providing a standardized interface for connecting APIs, plugins and data sources in agent workflows. The latest release of Red Hat OpenShift AI (v2.20) delivers additional enhancements for building, training, deploying and monitoring both gen AI and predictive AI models at scale. These include: Optimized model catalog (technology preview) provides easy access to validated Red Hat and third party models, enables the deployment of these models on Red Hat OpenShift AI clusters through the web console interface and manages the lifecycle of those models leveraging Red Hat OpenShift AI's integrated registry. Distributed training through the KubeFlow Training Operator enables the scheduling and execution of InstructLab model tuning and other PyTorch-based training and tuning workloads, distributed across multiple Red Hat OpenShift nodes and GPUs and includes distributed RDMA networking–acceleration and optimized GPU utilization to reduce costs. Feature store (technology preview), based on the upstream Kubeflow Feast project, provides a centralized repository for managing and serving data for both model training and inference, streamlining data workflows to improve model accuracy and reusability. Red Hat Enterprise Linux AI 1.5 brings new updates to Red Hat's foundation model platform for developing, testing and running large language models (LLMs). Key features in version 1.5 include: Google Cloud Marketplace availability, expanding the customer choice for running Red Hat Enterprise Linux AI in public cloud environments–along with AWS and Azure–to help simplify the deployment and management of AI workloads on Google Cloud. Enhanced multi-language capabilities for Spanish, German, French and Italian via InstructLab, allowing for model customization using native scripts and unlocking new possibilities for multilingual AI applications. Users can also bring their own teacher models for greater control over model customization and testing for specific use cases and languages, with future support planned for Japanese, Hindi and Korean. The Red Hat AI InstructLab on IBM Cloud service is also now generally available. This new cloud service further streamlines the model customization process, improving scalability and user experience, empowering enterprises to make use of their unique data with greater ease and control. Red Hat's vision: Any model, any accelerator, any cloud. The future of AI must be defined by limitless opportunity, not constrained by infrastructure silos. Red Hat sees a horizon where organizations can deploy any model, on any accelerator, across any cloud, delivering an exceptional, more consistent user experience without exorbitant costs. To unlock the true potential of gen AI investments, enterprises require a universal inference platform–a standard for more seamless, high-performance AI innovation, both today and in the years to come. Red Hat Summit: Join the Red Hat Summit keynotes to hear the latest from Red Hat executives, customers and partners: Modernized infrastructure meets enterprise-ready AI — Tuesday, May 20, 8-10 a.m. EDT (YouTube) Hybrid cloud evolves to deliver enterprise innovation — Wednesday, May 21, 8-9:30 a.m. EDT (YouTube) Supporting Quotes: Joe Fernandes, vice president and general manager, AI Business Unit, Red Hat 'Faster, more efficient inference is emerging as the newest decision point for gen AI innovation. Red Hat AI, with enhanced inference capabilities through Red Hat AI Inference Server and a new collection of validated third-party models, helps equip organizations to deploy intelligent applications where they need to, how they need to and with the components that best meet their unique needs.' Michele Rosen, research manager, IDC 'Organizations are moving beyond initial AI explorations and are focused on practical deployments. The key to their continued success lies in the ability to be adaptable with their AI strategies to fit various environments and needs. The future of AI not only demands powerful models, but models that can be deployed with ability and cost-effectiveness. Enterprises seeking to scale their AI initiatives and deliver business value will find this flexibility absolutely essential.' About Red Hat: Red Hat is the open hybrid cloud technology leader, delivering a trusted, consistent and comprehensive foundation for transformative IT innovation and AI applications. Its portfolio of cloud, developer, AI, Linux, automation and application platform technologies enables any application, anywhere—from the datacenter to the edge. As the world's leading provider of enterprise open source software solutions, Red Hat invests in open ecosystems and communities to solve tomorrow's IT challenges. Collaborating with partners and customers, Red Hat helps them build, connect, automate, secure and manage their IT environments, supported by consulting services and award-winning training and certification offerings. Forward-Looking Statements: Except for the historical information and discussions contained herein, statements contained in this press release may constitute forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements are based on the company's current assumptions regarding future business and financial performance. These statements involve a number of risks, uncertainties and other factors that could cause actual results to differ materially. Any forward-looking statement in this press release speaks only as of the date on which it is made. Except as required by law, the company assumes no obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements.
Mid East Info
07-05-2025
- Mid East Info
Visa and Whish Money Announce a Strategic Alliance that is Set to Revolutionize Digital Payments and Financial Services Regionally and Globally
United Arab Emirates – May, 2025: Visa, a global payments technology leader, and Whish Money SAL, a leading regional fintech, are pleased to announce one of the most strategic partnerships in the region. This partnership will enable Whish to leverage Visa's advanced services and technology for payments and money movement, while allowing Visa to expand its service offerings to over 1 million Whish app users. A signing ceremony was held to commemorate this significant collaboration, marking a new chapter in the fintech landscape of the region. Leila Serhan, Senior Vice President at Visa and Group Country Manager for the North Africa, Levant and Pakistan (NALP) region, commented on the partnership: 'This strategic partnership between Visa and Whish is the first in the levant region with an e-wallet and money transfer company, and we align with Whish on multiple pillars, most of which, trust and innovation. This partnership will enable us to bring our advanced payment technologies to a broader audience, facilitating seamless and secure money movement across the world. And as Whish is already present globally and is further expanding its reach, we can further facilitate the international growth through our presence in over 200 countries.' Toufic Koussa, CEO and Co-Founder of Whish Money , added: 'We are excited to embark on this new collaboration with Visa which marks a significant milestone for Whish Money. By integrating Visa's cutting-edge technology and services, we are poised to enhance our payment solutions and provide even more secure and efficient financial services to our customers. This partnership underscores our commitment to innovation and excellence in the fintech industry and is a testament to the thorough and careful due diligence Visa undertakes while engaging in such an affiliation given their high compliance standards. Our commitment to compliance and security has enabled us to achieve this unique partnership in the region.' This strategic alliance between Visa and Whish Money is set to revolutionize the fintech sector, bringing unparalleled advancements to digital payments and financial services regionally and globally. As both entities leverage their strengths and innovative technologies, the partnership will not only drive economic growth but also set a new benchmark for excellence and security in the industry. About Visa: Visa (NYSE: V) is a world leader in digital payments, facilitating transactions between consumers, merchants, 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. About Whish Money: Whish Money is part of Talaco Group that was established in 2004, specializing in technology, telecom, software development, money remittance, digital payments, and logistics industries. Whish has been one of the first global fintech platforms disrupting the distribution of telecom, ISP, gaming, and gift card vouchers, in addition to the digitization of financial services to corporates, retailers, and end users. With over 1,200 agents in Lebanon and 3,000 points of sale in the UAE, Whish Money continues to expand its reach and impact. Today, Whish has offices in Lebanon, UAE, and the USA serving more than 1 million users in over 110 countries. As a licensed and regulated company by the Central Bank of Lebanon, Whish Money adheres strictly to all local and international laws, regulations, and best practices including stringent Anti-Money Laundering (AML) and Counter-Terrorism Financing (CTF) measures. Whish works closely with local and international authorities to detect and prevent financial crime. Its robust compliance framework, backed by advanced technology and experienced professionals, ensures that every transaction is screened against local and international watch lists, and is scrutinized to identify and mitigate potential risks, enabling it to provide secure and reliable financial services to its customers. Learn
