Christine Kagendo 
Tareq Muhmood, Regional President, CEMEA,Visa
Visa Outlines AI, Token,and Stablecoin Capabilities Shaping the Future of Commerce;
- In CEMEA,Visa has seen growth in tokenized transactions from 26% in 2023 to 70% in 2026
- Since launch of stablecoins settlement capabilities a year ago in CEMEA, settlement volumes have increased nearly 60 times
Visa outlined a series of AI, stablecoin,and token capabilities designed to help clients across the Central and Eastern Europe, Middle East, and Africa (CEMEA) region participate in the next generation of commerce.
Ahead of the Visa Payments Forum, taking place in Paris on July 1, Visa shared how two foundational shifts —artificial intelligence and stablecoins —are transforming the front-end and back-end of commerce and money movement, and how Visa is enabling clients to adapt, scale and build trusted new experiences.
“Commerce is entering a new phase that is increasingly intelligent, programmable, and embedded into everyday experiences,” said Tareq Muhmood,Regional President,CEMEA,Visa.
He added, “For companies serving the digital economy the opportunity is significant,but so is the need for trust and interoperability.
Visa is focused on providing the infrastructure and intelligence to innovate confidently across the front- and back-end of payments and deliver better experiences for the consumers and businesses they serve.”
Powering the Front End of Commerce with AI;
Visa detailed how AI is reshaping how transactions are initiated, authorized, and trusted, while also accelerating how new commerce experiences are designed, developed and delivered.
As AI agents increasingly act on behalf of consumers and businesses,Visa Intelligent Commerce the company’s platform for agentic commerce, provides the trust and controls needed for AI agents to securely discover, initiate, and complete transactions.
To support this shift,Visa is working across the ecosystem to help ensure agent-initiated transactions are transparent and trusted.
This includes merchant enablement through the newly launched Agent Score,created with New Generation, which allows merchants to evaluate their websites for agentic commerce readiness—specifically,whether AI agents can navigate, understand and complete tasks on a merchant’s website.
Merchants also need to know which agents can be trusted to transact on their sites, and agents need confidence that they are interacting with legitimate merchants.
With the launch of Agentic Directory,Visa is providing a directory that includes agents and merchants that have been verified as legitimate participants in agentic commerce.
