Standards for Agentic Commerce: Visa's Bold Move and What It Means

Because we’re built on Solid, Inrupt is a company that appreciates the power of standards. Visa is another.

Their business is predicated on being the trusted intermediary — on setting the standards that allow any business with a POS terminal to confidently accept payment from any customer with a VISA card. 

The announcement of their 2025 roadmap, to enable a world of safe Intelligent Commerce (Hygenic Commerce, as they call it) is a perfect example of this standards-forward thinking.

It shows real forethought and anticipation for where the world is going next in terms of personal AI, particularly in commerce. They know that to truly deliver on the promise of AI in commerce, we need a new standard to allow any business with an AI Agent to accept personal insights from a customer. And the customer, in turn, to trust that the interaction will be done safely and only with their consent.

That’s why they’ve spent time working with Inrupt to understand how the Solid protocol underlying our Agentic Wallets™ is the ideal way to deliver a critical component in the future of commerce.

“We greatly appreciate the industry leadership that Inrupt provides promoting and enabling strong consumer control regarding how data is used,” says Jack Forestell, Visa’s Chief Product and Strategy officer and the driving force behind today’s launch. “Inrupt’s and the Solid protocol serves as a North Star and high standard for all industry participants to seek to achieve.”

The Critical Need for Standards in Agentic Commerce

Here's the immediate challenge Visa solved with their announcement today:

If every AI Agent builder needs to agree with every merchant — and vice versa — about a trusted way for Agents to pass payment credentials (without being banned as malicious bots), then we're never going to get the Agentic Commerce world we want.

It would be endless point-to-point negotiation. A quagmire of technical integration that would stifle innovation before it even gets started. So, Visa has released the payment standard for safe, AI-ready digital credit cards.

But here’s the insight Visa has about where we’re all going next:

In order for AI Commerce to benefit both sides of the market — merchants and cardholders — these Agents need to be effective, personalized shopping guides. And in order to achieve that at scale we also need a standard approach to personal data management and consent that goes beyond any single provider or consumer of personal data.

Otherwise, we’d end up in the same crazy place…every Agent builder caught in a knot of point-to-point negotiation with every supplier or consumer of personal data. Not to mention the actual people who rightly own this data — the customers — are completely cut out of that process.

Any Agent builder that wants quick adoption should be able to let their customers quickly plug in existing personal data, preferences, and histories so they can be off and running with a personal experience. Otherwise, consumers won't see the personal recommendations they want from that company and will end up buying elsewhere. At the same time, aside from complete shop-aholics, no-one is going to spend hours and hours manually teaching each of the AI Agents about their preferences, their budget and past purchases. 

The only way to do it is to have a customer-centric standard that makes this personal data available and interoperable. The data needs to travel with the individual, accessed by various AI systems when they need it. 

Otherwise there are unhappy consumers who can’t find what they’re looking for. And unhappy merchants who can’t find their target customers. A standard approach makes both sides comfortable and happy. And the banks of course benefit as well, because now the trust they have in Visa’s global payments network can be extended into the realm of AI.

Privacy and Safety First

And all this has to be done safely and in a way that ensures consumers their data will be treated privately.

Research we're privy to as a consequence of our relationship with Visa increasingly bears this out: consumers want the convenience of AI-driven personalization, but they demand the privacy and security of knowing their data isn't being misused.

In fact, Visa research shows that 1) data security, 2) privacy, and 3) lack of control are the three biggest factors that would keep about half of the US population from engaging in Agentic Commerce.

So it's genuinely exciting to see the industry embrace the foundational building blocks of personal data that informs AI Agents, mediated by the customer who grants their consent. And it's particularly significant that Visa is making their data token insights available as the first safe and reliable stream of data available for this world of personal Agentic commerce.

That's why Inrupt is working with Visa to make their consent and personal data API compatible with Solid — already a Web standard for data interoperability.

A Partnership Built on Shared Vision

This isn't a new relationship — we've been working together for over two years. We've conducted a successful POC and now we’re standing up a sandbox inside Visa so merchants, financial institutions and LLM providers can test our Agentic Wallets alongside the rest of Visa’s suite of Intelligent Commerce APIs.

For that matter, we welcome any other company that wants to engage in the world of personal, consented Agentic Commerce to come work with us as well.

As the web standards for personal data management and consent become adopted across AI systems, every company that wants to engage consumers in this world of personal Agentic Commerce will have to make sure their internal customer data sources can be translated and connected to this world of personal AI agents.

The Future: User-Controlled Agentic Wallets

Where this leads is the world of user-controlled Agentic Wallets™ — a single place where individuals can store, manage, and selectively share their personal data with the AI agents they choose to work with.

This isn't just about payment information. It's about all the data that makes you who you are digitally. Your preferences, your history, your intentions, your credentials — all controlled by you, shared only with your explicit consent.

There’s another evolution of all this, per Tim’s vision of “Charlie,” the AI that works for you. “Client-side AI” if you like, mediating all interactions a consumer has with other organizations and entities. But more of that another time.

Today, the companies that recognize the importance of standards in this new era of commerce — like Visa clearly has — will be the ones defining how the future works. Not just for themselves, but for all of us.

It might sound paradoxical, but the real winners will be those who unlock true personalization through standardization.