AI Will Soon Book Flights and Buy Your Luggage

Visa has announced a significant partnership with OpenAI, aiming to integrate Visa payment capabilities into ChatGPT. This collaboration, unveiled at the Visa Payments Forum 2026 in San Francisco, seeks to enable AI agents to initiate and complete transactions autonomously. The system will employ tokenization to enhance security during online payments, replacing traditional card numbers with secure codes.

This move is part of Visa's broader strategy for agentic commerce, intending to create a more efficient shopping environment. Despite assurances that consumers will retain control through user-set parameters like spending limits, concerns about data security persist. Experts warn that involving more parties in payment processes increases the risk of breaches and theft, and the responsibility for AI errors remains unaddressed.

Consumer adoption may also be a hurdle, as a 2025 Bain & Company survey revealed only 24% of US consumers are comfortable with AI making purchases for them. While companies like Google, Apple, and Samsung are also exploring AI-driven commerce, the willingness of consumers to delegate financial decisions to AI remains uncertain.