Visa demonstrated AI-powered payment experiences at Global Fintech Fest 2026 in Mumbai, showcasing seamless transactions with major banks and fintech partners. The demonstration allowed consumers to use natural-language prompts to move from product discovery to authenticated payment completion, spanning use cases such as travel bookings, food ordering, and online shopping. As reported by The Hindu BusinessLine, payments were processed using Visa's existing tokenisation infrastructure and Visa Payment Passkey authentication. The showcase covered both large retailers and smaller D2C and MSME merchants, with AI agents guiding consumers through choices while keeping humans in the loop at the payment stage.
Visa partnered with Federal Bank, IndusInd Bank, RBL Bank, and fintechs including Razorpay, Paytm Payment Services, Cashfree Payments, and Pine Labs for the demonstration. According to The Hindu BusinessLine, Sethi emphasized that Visa intends to work with banks, fintechs, and merchants to build interoperable and scalable payment experiences as agentic commerce develops. The event, held at the Jio World Convention Centre, is one of the largest fintech gatherings globally, with Visa's participation signaling growing industry focus on embedding secure payment rails into AI-driven consumer experiences, particularly in India's fast-expanding digital payments market.
Visa cited industry projections estimating that AI agents could facilitate $3-5 trillion in global commerce transaction value by 2030. As reported by The Hindu BusinessLine, this demonstration represents a significant step in building interoperable and scalable payment experiences as agentic commerce develops. The company's strategic focus on digital rails enabling payments, settlement, authentication, and authorisation at both national and international scales positions it well for the evolving AI-powered payments landscape, with Sethi highlighting that India has become the global capital of scan and pay, making mobile an important instrument for tap and pay transactions.
As reported by Business Standard, Visa has established a 55% share of India's 1 billion+ tokens as a single contributor, demonstrating its market leadership in security infrastructure. The company has invested significantly in cyber resilience, fraud intelligence, and threat monitoring capabilities. In April, Visa participated in Anthropic's Project Glasswing alongside 50 companies to test AI models on its systems, building an agentic harness to counter such models. The company is also focusing on MSMEs through transactional data analysis to provide lending insights where traditional risk scores are unavailable, with Visa consulting and analytics emerging as a significant growth area.
According to Business Standard reports, Sethi addressed the growth challenge by highlighting UPI's dominance in low-value, day-to-day payments while positioning cards as a superior proposition for affluent segments and cross-border transactions. He noted that global players like Visa can bring value through their global acceptance ecosystem and international network capabilities. The company is exploring UPI linkage with regulators while maintaining focus on segmentation strategies targeting affluent customers and cross-border transactions. Sethi emphasized that the affluent segment is where cards become an important proposition, with cross-border transactions representing another key area where Visa's global network provides competitive advantage.
