AI Agents Get New Tools for Secure Invoice Payments
The Money20/20 USA conference, which took place in Las Vegas from October 18-21, featured discussions on the practical applications of emerging technologies, moving beyond the typical product demos to explore real-world implementation.
Authentication challenges for AI-powered transactions
On October 20, a significant announcement was made by Visa, BILL, and Billtrust, unveiling a live pilot that enables AI agents to initiate and complete invoice payments through supplier portals, utilizing Visa’s Trusted Agent Protocol for authentication. This development was complemented by the introduction of Browser Tokens by Evervault and Browserbase, allowing AI agents to access accounts and make purchases without directly handling sensitive credentials.
As AI assumes a more prominent role in shopping and payment processes, the need to verify the authenticity of AI agents and ensure they are acting with the user’s permission becomes increasingly key. This necessitates the development of infrastructure that can authenticate agents and verify their permissions while safeguarding sensitive customer information. The formation of such infrastructure is underway, with systems being designed to address these challenges.
Consumers are already exploring the potential of AI agents, with examples including asking agents to order groceries based on the contents of their refrigerators, as described by Dean Hickman-Smith, chief revenue officer at Testlio. However, transitioning from using AI for discovery to enabling it to make purchases requires a higher level of trust. Margaret Ryan, product lead at American Express Digital Labs, highlighted that while nearly 75% of consumers consider shopping with preferred merchants important when AI is involved, only 36% are comfortable with AI completing transactions on their behalf.
This disparity between interest and action poses a significant hurdle for companies seeking to integrate autonomous systems into daily commerce. For AI agents to become practical tools rather than novelties, there must be a way to verify that they are acting on explicit user instructions, operating within clear boundaries, and following user directives.
AI and fraud prevention: a growing concern
The technology enabling AI-powered transactions also has the potential to scale criminal activities, making fraud prevention a critical component of agentic commerce. At Money20/20, Sarah Ward, chief legal and administrative officer at Chainalysis, emphasized the significance of AI in fraud, stating it is “the biggest force multiplier that fraud has ever seen.” She advocated for increased intelligence sharing among firms, as criminals already operate across networks, exchanging information.
Enhancing the user experience with stablecoins
Companies at Money20/20 approached stablecoin adoption from two primary angles: reducing transaction risk and facilitating the use of digital assets. Mastercard introduced Stablecoin Security, which assesses risk using traditional financial and blockchain signals before transactions are processed on-chain. Meanwhile, Mesh and Visa announced a partnership enabling consumers to spend crypto and stablecoins at Visa merchants, with Mesh converting digital assets into local currency at checkout.
Streamlining complex payment flows
The conference saw J.P. Morgan Payments announce its support for Mercado Libre’s Global Selling program, facilitating U.S. merchants’ sales to Latin American buyers through streamlined business identity onboarding and payment flows. Danielle Sharpe, global head of FI Clearing and PayTech Payments at Standard Chartered, described “orchestration” as the process of determining the optimal payment flow based on a client’s specific needs, rather than requiring the client to select the underlying payment method.
