Visa expects its roster of nearly 50 artificial intelligence partners in production to double in the coming months, as it prepares to handle purchases that consumers and businesses delegate to software.

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The immediate focus is establishing the authority behind those purchases. During Visa’s fiscal fourth-quarter earnings call on Tuesday (Oct. 27) after the markets closed, CEO Ryan McInerney described the work required to identify an agent, connect it to a customer and confirm that its spending follows the customer’s instructions.

“It is clear that in agentic, trust is the biggest barrier to scale,” he told analysts.

McInerney identified his firm as a key catalyst for cementing that trust, and offered up B2B payments as an early agentic application, including automated bill payment and invoice settlement.

Visa is also using agents internally. More than 60% of its product development and engineering teams have adopted an agentic toolchain. McInerney said 12 people delivered stablecoin-platform functionality in seven weeks, shortening work that previously would have required considerably more time and staff.

Visa’s credential base reached 5.2 billion at the end of the fiscal fourth quarter, up 6%, as management described expansion through co-branded cards, affluent products and debit portfolios.

“Our Flex credentials have tripled since last year,” McInerney said, citing growth among existing participants and new partners. Visa Pay, which connects digital wallets to Visa-accepting sellers, nearly tripled its geographic presence to 11 countries.

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