PARIS, France, June 30. Visa today unveiled a
suite of solutions in artificial intelligence, stablecoins and
tokenization designed to help clients across the Central and
Eastern Europe, Middle East and Africa (CEMEA) region, which
includes Azerbaijan, unlock the next generation of commerce
opportunities.
Ahead of the Visa Payments Forum taking place on July 1 in
Paris, the company outlined how two key trends — artificial
intelligence and stablecoins — are reshaping both customer
experience and the technological foundations of commerce and money
movement, as well as how Visa is helping clients adapt, scale and
launch new solutions while maintaining consumer trust.
“Commerce is entering a new phase of development, becoming
increasingly intelligent, programmable and embedded in everyday
life,” said Tareq Muhmood, Visa Regional President for
Central and Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Africa.
“For businesses operating in the digital economy, immense
opportunities are opening up, but at the same time the importance
of trust and interoperability is growing. Visa is building the
infrastructure and intelligent technologies that will allow our
clients to innovate confidently, both at the user interface and
infrastructure levels, improving the payment experience for
consumers and the businesses they serve.”
Transforming commerce experiences through artificial
intelligence
Visa said artificial intelligence is transforming how
transactions are initiated, authorised and confirmed, while also
accelerating the development and deployment of new commerce use
cases. As agentic commerce evolves, the Visa Intelligent Commerce
platform provides the necessary layer of trust and control,
enabling AI agents to safely discover products and initiate and
complete transactions on behalf of consumers and businesses.
To support the shift toward this new model, Visa is working with
industry participants to ensure agent-initiated transactions are
reliable and transparent. A new tool, Agent Score,
developed in collaboration with New Generation, allows merchants to
assess their readiness for agentic commerce — in particular,
whether AI agents can correctly navigate their websites, understand
content and perform required actions.
In addition, Visa is launching the Agentic
Directory, a catalogue of verified agents and merchants
that have been vetted and confirmed as legitimate participants in
agentic commerce. The initiative aims to ensure that merchants can
determine which agents can be trusted on their platforms, while
agents can also verify legitimate counterparties.
Advancing tokenization in AI-driven
commerce
Tokenization has become one of the key drivers of e-commerce
growth in the CEMEA region, making digital and mobile payments more
secure and convenient. The share of tokenized transactions
processed by Visa in CEMEA rose from 26% in 2023 to 70% in
2026.
Today, tokens already carry a securely protected set of data
specifically designed for digital payments. As new commerce
channels and agent-based use cases emerge, Visa is expanding the
data embedded in tokens, including transaction type, token usage
context and payer information. Another major innovation is the
introduction of a token trust signal. Throughout the token
lifecycle — from issuance to usage history — its reliability is
assessed, generating a trust signal for each transaction.
Together, these developments aim to strengthen the role of
tokens as the foundation of secure digital and agentic commerce,
providing richer context and greater confidence in transaction
legitimacy in an increasingly automated and intelligent payments
ecosystem.
Modernising money movement infrastructure with
stablecoins
Visa also highlighted progress in modernising settlement and
money movement through stablecoins and blockchain infrastructure.
With Tokenized Deposits, the company is building a
technology layer that turns traditional bank deposits into
programmable digital money available 24/7. This capability enables
banks to achieve stablecoin-like speed and flexibility while
keeping funds on their own balance sheets.
Visa is also expanding stablecoin settlement pilots across
regions, blockchain networks and currencies. Building on early
pilots launched in early 2025, the company has already processed
billions of dollars in stablecoin transactions through VisaNet,
reaching an annualised volume of approximately $7 billion as of
March 2026.
Issuing banks are already settling with Visa on-chain seven days
a week, and the company is now working to extend daily settlement
capabilities to acquiring banks as well, enabling more flexible and
frequent settlements across the payments ecosystem. Since the
launch of stablecoin settlements in CEMEA a year ago, volumes have
increased nearly 60-fold.
To enable consumers and businesses to use stablecoin balances
wherever Visa is accepted, the company continues to expand
stablecoin-linked card programs. More than 160 such programs are
currently live or in development worldwide, with further expansion
expected.
Turning data into intelligent insights through
AI
To help clients meet rising consumer expectations, Visa is
combining modern payments infrastructure with data-driven tools
that improve decision-making across the payments journey. The
company introduced Visa Trip Intelligence, an
AI-powered travel insights capability that allows banks to
anticipate customer needs before transactions occur.
Launched today in CEMEA, the service combines VisaNet analytics
with third-party data to identify travel intent and generate
personalised journey insights and engagement recommendations. This
enables banks to proactively support customers before travel,
reduce payment friction, and offer tailored travel benefits,
services and rewards.
