Visa Wants to Let You Give ChatGPT Your Credit Card. What Could Go Wrong?

Giving ChatGPT your credit card sounds like a bad joke. Visa and OpenAI think it's the future of shopping.

Visa has announced plans to enable AI agents—including OpenAI's ChatGPT—to make payments on behalf of users using their Visa credit cards. The initiative, revealed during Visa's annual payments conference, is designed to let AI agents autonomously purchase goods, book services, and manage recurring subscriptions without direct human intervention at checkout. The move positions Visa at the center of the emerging AI commerce ecosystem, where agents are expected to handle an increasing share of online transactions.

The push comes as AI companies race to give their chatbots real-world utility beyond conversation. OpenAI has already integrated browsing and code execution into ChatGPT; adding payment capabilities transforms it into a full-fledged shopping assistant. Visa’s existing payment token technology—which replaces sensitive card numbers with a unique, reusable token—provides the security layer needed to make agent-driven payments viable. By extending tokenization to AI agents, Visa aims to balance convenience with fraud protection.

Under the partnership, users will authorize a specific AI agent to use a tokenized version of their card, with spending limits and merchant restrictions set in advance. For example, a user could instruct ChatGPT to find and purchase a flight within a $500 budget, and the agent would execute the transaction using the linked Visa token. OpenAI has not disclosed a launch date, but sources indicate pilot programs could begin in early 2025. The system is expected to initially cover digital goods and services before expanding to physical products.

Security analysts have raised concerns. AI agent payments reduce human oversight during transactions, increasing the risk of unintended purchases or exploitation by malicious actors. Visa counters that tokenization isolates each transaction, and user consent is required for each new merchant category. Still, the American Bankers Association has flagged the need for clear liability frameworks if an AI agent makes an unauthorized purchase.

The broader implication is a shift from humans managing payments to delegating them to algorithms. Analysts at McKinsey project that AI agent payments could account for 10–15% of all e-commerce transactions by 2028. For Visa, it means retaining relevance in a world where digital wallets and cryptocurrencies challenge its dominance. For OpenAI, it adds a revenue channel beyond subscriptions, as the company could take a small fee on agent-driven purchases.

The next milestones to watch are regulatory filings, pilot launches with select merchants, and consumer adoption. Visa has filed patents for agent-specific transaction monitoring, while OpenAI is hiring payment security engineers. If successful, AI agent payments could become as common as one-click checkout—but the path is paved with privacy and control questions that regulators will not ignore.