If you’ve ever found yourself lost in the maze of online shopping, endlessly clicking through product pages, comparing prices, and double-checking your credit card details, you’re certainly not alone.
Many Australians have embraced the convenience of e-commerce, but let’s be honest, it can sometimes feel like a time-consuming chore. However, a new development from Visa promises to make those days a thing of the past.
The global payments giant has just launched Visa Intelligent Commerce, a cutting-edge artificial intelligence (AI) tool designed to revolutionise how we shop online.
Visa Intelligent Commerce is a new AI-powered shopping assistant that can handle everything from booking your next holiday to organising a family BBQ—without you having to lift a finger.
By partnering with leading AI platforms such as OpenAI (the creators of ChatGPT), Microsoft, IBM, and others, Visa is bringing ‘agentic AI’ to the masses.
Imagine telling your phone, ‘Organise a BBQ for four people this Saturday,’ and having the AI create a shopping list, order the sausages, bread rolls, and drinks, and have them delivered to your door.
It could even send out invitations and reminders to your guests. That’s the promise of agentic AI.
Most of us are already familiar with predictive AI—think of Google finishing your search queries, or your phone suggesting the next word as you type.
Then came generative AI, like Chatgpt, which can write emails, generate images, or help you plan a trip by listing hotels and attractions.
Agentic AI, however, goes a step further. Instead of just providing information, it acts on your behalf.
For example, you could say, ‘Book a weekend in Melbourne for me,’ the AI would handle everything: flights, hotel, restaurant reservations, and even booking an Uber to the airport. All you need to do is provide your preferences and budget; the AI does the rest.
To use Visa Intelligent Commerce, you’ll upload your card details to a trusted AI platform. But don’t worry—Visa uses ‘tokenisation’ to keep your information safe.
Instead of sharing your 16-digit card number, the system replaces it with a random set of numbers, making it useless to hackers. You can also set up a passkey to always have the final say before purchasing.
You’re in control of how much freedom you give the AI. You can ask it to show you an itinerary before booking, set spending limits, or let it handle everything if you’re feeling adventurous.
And if something goes wrong—say, you receive the wrong item or fall victim to a scam—Visa’s usual protections and refund policies still apply.
Visa’s Intelligent Commerce launched on 1 May, and the company predicts that most people will adopt it within a few months.
Companies can already engage with this without taking any action. Since a bot is browsing instead of a person, it may observe variations in the metrics related to online shopping.
Consumer specialist Gary Mortimer offered guidance for those wanting to use the technology.
‘In the past, retailers and other businesses have invested in Google’s advertising tools, like Google Ads, to target specific customer groups and increase brand exposure by using relevant keywords and phrases,’ he explained.
‘In the very near future, business will need to start to develop their own AI agents to promote their business and sell their products and services.’
He anticipates that consumer AI agents will soon interact with business AI agents across various aspects of e-commerce.
Would you feel comfortable letting an AI assistant handle your online shopping, or do you prefer to do things the old-fashioned way? What concerns or questions do you have about this new technology? Share your thoughts in the comments below.
Also read: Is your online shopping safe from ‘ghost stores’?
