(19 May 2026 – Australia) Visa and Mastercard are testing how agentic AI technology can automate routine financial decisions and time consuming administrative tasks plaguing small businesses.
Visa is making strides in preparing the local ecosystem for the next phase of agentic commerce with several Australian partners signing on to Visa’s Agentic Ready program including ANZ, Bank of Melbourne, BankSA, Cuscal Limited, ING, Latitude, NAB, St.George and Zip Co.
“Agentic commerce represents a fundamental shift in how people shop and pay that will become truly meaningful when it works across the real world of commerce. The Agentic Ready Program is about preparing the ecosystem for what comes next, when AI agents are making decisions across merchants, categories and platforms, not just within a single store” commented Visa Oceania Group Country Manager, Alan Machet.
Mastercard has also executed a series of agent-led business transactions across Australia and New Zealand, testing how artificial intelligence (AI) could move beyond recommending actions to carrying them out. The strategy is to link steps that are currently disparate where business data feeds into an AI system, generates a recommendation and then completes the payment.
The distinction is that these transactions combine insight and execution, rather than leaving business owners to act on recommendations themselves. The aim is to reduce the number of steps involved between identifying a task and completing it, building on earlier AI development for the group’s “virtual C-suite” designed to provide small businesses with strategic insights typically available only to larger enterprises.
“There’s still that disconnect – you have to come out of the AI platform to then go to that merchant to pay. That last mile is where agentic will play a role” stated Mastercard APAC Executive VP of Commercial & New Payment Flows, Anouska Ladds.
“SMEs don’t have a passion to be a CFO. So where you can take that away and help them enable that you’re giving the SME time back” Ladds added.
“HSBC Australia recently participated in an agentic payments pilot with Mastercard, supported by RedOwl’s AI capabilities. For us, the focus is two-sided as it should be with payments. The opportunity is for smarter automation, faster processing and reduced operational friction for Commercial Cards but also enhanced risk and responsibility through clear accountability, strong controls and resilience against fraud, scams and liability risks” commented HSBC Australia Head of Product Management, Global Payment Solutions, Navaid Khatib.
“This pilot is helping us shape a practical framework for agentic payments in Commercial Cards for our Corporate and Institutional clients with a more mature end-to-end approach to adopting AI in payments that balances innovation with trust” Khatib added.