Artificial Intelligence Will Drive Commercial Digitalization

By William Peña – Journalist, contributor at ITBS.

Over the next two years, a digital revolution will reach the commerce sector, and it will be driven by Artificial Intelligence.

This is the assessment of Visa CEO Ryan McInerney. The executive commented that in the late 1990s there was a major wave of digitalization driven by e‑commerce; later, around 2015, there was another shift led by mobile commerce; and between 2026 and 2027 there will be a digitalization driven by AI.

He also highlighted the growth of AI‑driven commerce and so‑called agentic commerce, an emerging concept in the field of AI that refers to systems capable of acting autonomously and proactively, with decision‑making capabilities to achieve complex goals, going beyond the limits of traditional automation.

These agents do not merely wait for instructions; they plan, interact with external tools, and optimize results without constant supervision.

Commerce Improves with AI

AI‑enhanced commerce is expected to have a greater impact than its predecessors, since agent platforms and agent‑based payments will transform shopping and commerce in a very profound way.

Ryan McInerney noted that Visa credit cards recently launched their intelligent commerce platform, which will resolve chargebacks, disputes between issuers and acquirers, and refunds using agents, in the same way these processes are handled with humans.

To date, Visa has five billion cards accepted in more than 200 countries, a scale that generated more than $40 billion in revenue for the company last year, 25% of which came from services provided to its clients, such as security and processing solutions.

McInerney explained that Visa has 35,000 employees and that its role now will be to manage AI agents with the same level of effectiveness as it manages people.

He added that the greatest change has occurred in product and technology, with 60% of new developments being AI‑assisted.

“Tokenization is the foundation of everything that is coming. Everything will be tokenized,” McInerney stated, highlighting that Visa already has 18 billion tokens. Regarding stablecoins, he predicted that they will play an important role in specific use cases.